Feasibility study of near-infrared fluorescence tomography using a positron emission tomograph equipped with depth-of-interaction PET detectors

We are currently developing an imaging system that combines simultaneous positron emission tomography (PET) with near-infrared (NIR) optical tomography, thus supporting two different types of molecular imaging. For this system, we are considering whether to use depth of interaction (DOI) PET detectors as simultaneous detectors of gamma rays and NIR light by changing the original upper reflectors to dichroic mirrors. The DOI-PET detector has very low spatial resolution for NIR light compared to the charge-coupled device cameras that are normally used. However, it is possible to reconstruct images of comparable value from the data acquired by low-resolution devices because the light is scattered by biological tissues and high-resolution devices are not necessarily effective at improving image quality. In this study, we demonstrate the feasibility of 3D NIR fluorescence tomography imaging by employing DOI-PET detectors in computer simulations. In the simulations, we used a 40 mm × 40 mm × 40 mm cubic phantom, a square detector geometry, and an optical diffusion equation to approximate the light propagation. We then evaluated imaging systems for 3D fluorescence tomography with different detector resolutions and excitation light arrangements using singular-value analysis and imaging simulation. We confirmed that the reconstructed images from low-resolution detectors (8 × 8 pixels for an area of 40 mm × 40 mm) are the same as those from high-resolution detectors (16 × 16 pixels for the same area).