X-ray luminescence optical tomography imaging: experimental studies

We present a hybrid imaging modality, x-ray luminescence optical tomography (XLOT), in which collimated x-ray beams are used to excite phosphor-based contrast agents. Images are reconstructed from the optical signals, using the known x-ray beam location and spatial extent as priors. We demonstrate XLOT using phantom experiments with deep targets and show that the reconstructed signal varies by <12% when the depth changes from 4.2 to 7.7 mm. For simple source distributions, we find as few as two orthogonal projection measurements are sufficient for XLOT reconstruction. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America