| Molecular imaging modalities play critical roles in diagnosis and surgical treatment of cancers.Most of the patients with cancer and tumor rely on surgical intervention to remove large area cancerous tissues.Although there have been efforts to employ traditional imaging modalities to guide operation,these systems are bulky,expensive for operation,and may interrupt surgical procedures.In recent years,optical imaging guided surgery has been widely used in both biomedical research and clinical medical surgery due to the simple and flexible design,high resolution and low surgical costs.Especially,near-infrared(NIR)fluorescence imaging with deep penetration depth and high signal to background ratio is highly desired by surgeons and research teams.We report the design,characterization and validation of a real-time color and NIR fluorescence overlaid imaging system for open operation.Both images of color and NIR fluorescence can be acquired simultaneously at speed of 31 frames per second(fps)with high sensitivity in the field of view(FOV)about 7×10 cm~2.The system contains a visible LED light source,a NIR excitation light source,2-CCD camera,filters and image processing software.To validate the performance of imaging system,we conducted fluorescence imaging of NIR dyes including ICG(indocyanine green),IR780 and OTL0038 with different concentrations dissolved in water,methanol and serum,respectively.In addition,to verify the feasibility of the system for clinical imaging,we performed real-time imaging of tumor bearing mice with injection of fluorescent agents.The real-time images presented the clear boundary of the tumor and the surrounding healthy tissue.Secondly,we performed angiographic image of artery of the hind limbs and the small vessels in the back of the mice.We could clearly distinguish the morphology of the blood vessels.Finally,we demonstrated lymphography experiments in mice,which confirmed that our system has potential applications in lymphatic imaging. |
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