Incorporation of an ultrasound and model guided permissible region improves quantitative source recovery in bioluminescence tomography

Bioluminescence imaging has shown great potential for studying and monitoring disease progression in small animal pre-clinical imaging. However, absolute bioluminescence source recovery through tomographic multi-wavelength measurements is often hindered through the lack of quantitative accuracy and suffers from both poor localisation and quantitative recovery. In this work a method to incorporate a permissible region strategy through not only a priori location (permissible region) but also based on a model of light propagation and hence light sensitivity is developed and tested using both simulations and experimental data. Reconstructions on two different numerical models (a simple slab, and the digital version of a heterogeneous mouse) show an improvement of localisation and recovery of intensity (around 25% for the slab model and around 10% for the digital mouse model). This strategy is also used with experimental data from a phantom gel, which demonstrated an improved recovered tomographic image.