Radioluminesence Imaging Studies For Small Animals

Cerenkov luminescence imaging(CLI) can be used to achieve signal visualization of medical isotopes radioactive decay by optical imaging instrument, and this feature has attracted more and more attention. But there Cerenkov imaging signal has some defects, such as weak signal, poor tissue penetration, and targeting defects, which seriously limit the application and development of the technology.Based on this situation, we propose a new imaging modality of radiation luminescence imaging. Luminescence imaging radiation uses high-energy particles(α, β, γ, etc.) produced by the decay of radionuclides as the excitation source to excite the luminescent material to emit a fluorescent signal. Contrast to Cerenkov fluorescence, the main advantages of radiation luminescence imaging lie in that the fluorescence radiation signal is 10 to 100 times of the Cerenkov fluorescent signal, and that the radiation-emitting material if modified to a probe molecular targeting for specific diseases may realize molecular targeting imaging.In this paper, we carried out a small animal model of radiation-emitting in-vivo imaging method, and the main contents include the following three points:(1) It described the radiation emitting imaging principle and noise removal methods, and we builds up a radiation luminescent imaging system, and carries out the performance verification of the system.(2) It launched a two-dimensional radiation luminescence imaging research. The radiation emitting material Gd2O2S:Tb was applied to two-dimensional radiation luminescence imaging in vivo, and the fusion image of a two-dimensional radiation luminescence was obtained successfully. With the comparison of PET-CT reconstruction image, the radiation-emitting radiation image can accurately obtain the position of the radiation distribution of the light emitting material, which verified the feasibility of radiation emitting imaging.(3) It launched a radiation-emitting tomography study. A radiation-emitting tomography research combined with optical tomographic imaging theory is launched with radiation-emitting material Gd2O2S:Tb on the phantom model and a mouse model. We can successfully obtain a three-dimensional distribution of radiation-emitting material. The fusion images of the three-dimensional distribution and CT in two-dimensional cross-section data and three-dimensional volume data verify that the radiation emittingtomography can accurately reconstruct the radiation in the deep tissues of the three-dimensional spatial distribution of the light emitting material.In this paper, we have got the two-dimensional radiation emitting fused image of small animal in vivo successfully, combined with the optical tomographic reconstruction to obtain three-dimensional visualization, and realized successfully the radiation-emitting tomography. This fully illustrates the feasibility and reliability of radiation-emitting tomography. Meantime, we not only promote the radiation emitting imaging from the two-dimensional imaging to three-dimensional imaging, which help locate deep tissue imaging and quantification, also greatly promote the process of emitting radiation imaging studies. The radiation luminescence imaging research provides a solid foundation for further research and future applications of radiation-emitting technologies.