This paper presents an optical system for performing excitation resolved imaging of fluorescent dyes, tissue phantoms and ex vivo tissues. The excitation source was a supercontinuum generated in a highly nonlinear fibre, spectrally filtered using dispersive optics and a movable slit or digital micromirror device. This allowed excitation with multiple spectra, which may be chosen to optimize the fluorescence yield from a particular fluorophore, or to maximize discrimination between multiple labels. As an initial validation, the analysis of fluorescent dye solutions embedded in collagen gels in the presence of scatterers and absorbers by using fixed reference isomap (FR-IsoMap) is presented, followed by initial evaluation with human lung bronchial tissue. The proposed system has potential applications for in vivo fluorescence endoscopy of cancerous tissues through excitation spectral selection and analysis with FR-IsoMap.

Date Published: 12 February 2008
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 6848, Advanced Biomedical and Clinical Diagnostic Systems VI, 68480Z (12 February 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.767923

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6848:
Advanced Biomedical and Clinical Diagnostic Systems VI
Tuan Vo-Dinh; Warren S. Grundfest; David A. Benaron; Gerald E. Cohn, Editor(s)