Jul 16 2010
CEA-Leti announced that its new imaging system, designed for near infrared (NIR) fluorescence-enhanced diffuse optical tomography (fDOT), is available for commercial usage. The commercial launch is announced after the beta testing of the imaging system at five research centers in France including the Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot near Paris, and the Albert Bonniot Institute in Grenoble.
The fDOT system allows researchers to evaluate the efficiency of treatments and measure the cancer activity. The system also offers quantitative functional measurements to the pharmacological industry for studies on small animals such as mice. After injecting fluorescent molecular probes into the mice, the distribution of probes is reconstructed in the tissue. The reconstruction facilitates 3D localization of the required areas and quantization of fluorescent dye’s local concentration. At present, animal’s complex surface shape, and tissue heterogeneity limit the existing fDOT systems.
The fDOT imaging system allows reconstruction of fluorescence yield in highly attenuating regions of the body such as lungs. In addition, the system does not need the mice to be immersed in optical index-matching liquid. The mice are scanned with NIR light after injecting the fluorescent marker, which is cancer specific. The fDOT system records the emitted and transmitted fluorescent lights; and then performs the 3D fluorescence map reconstruction to deduce cancer activity.