Smart Toolkit for Fluorescence Tomography: Simulation, Reconstruction, and Validation.

Fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT) can provide valuable molecular information by mapping the bio-distribution of fluorescent reporter molecules in the intact organism. Various prototype FMT systems have been introduced during the past decade. However, none of them has evolved as a standard tool for routine biomedical research. The goal of this paper is to develop a software package that can automate the complete FMT reconstruction procedure. We present smart toolkit for fluorescence tomography (STIFT), a comprehensive platform comprising three major protocols: 1) virtual FMT, i.e., forward modeling and reconstruction of simulated data; 2) control of actual FMT data acquisition; and 3) reconstruction of experimental FMT data. Both simulation and phantom experiments have shown robust reconstruction results for homogeneous and heterogeneous tissue-mimicking phantoms containing fluorescent inclusions. STIFT can be used for optimization of FMT experiments, in particular for optimizing illumination patterns. This paper facilitates FMT experiments by bridging the gaps between simulation, actual experiments, and data reconstruction.