Demonstration of video-rate diffuse optical tomography in phantoms and tissues

Near-infrared diffuse optical tomography has been demonstrated with video rate acquisition of the transmitted signal for 8 sources and 8 detectors. The system design is outlined with components illustrated, and tomographic images are shown for phantoms and tissues. The system uses spectral encoding of the laser sources at small wavelength increments to allow each source location to be discerned at the detector. The key to this is spectrally dispersing the different wavelengths prior to detection, with a video rate CCD. Possible uses for this type of system are in the area of physiological monitoring and contrast agent kinetic imaging.