Special Issue "Molecular Imaging"

Guest Editor
Dr. Gus R. Rosania
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Michigan, 428 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
Website: http://pharmacy.umich.edu/pharmacy/gus_rosania
E-Mail:
Phone: +1 734 763 1032
Fax: +1 734 615 6162
Interests: drug transport; cellular pharmacokinetics; computational modeling; systems biology; cheminformatics; microscopic imaging

Dear Colleagues,

We welcome all articles related to research, development and application of bioimaging probes for all imaging modalities, as well as image data management and analysis including image databases, image feature extraction, segmentation, classification, object tracking, kinetics, rendering data analysis, data visualization, imaging probe synthesis and screening, imaging probe optimization, cheminformatics of bioimaging probes, etc.

Dr. Gus R. Rosania
Guest Editor

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• Bioimaging
• Bioinformatics
• Cheminformatics
• Image Databases
• Data Visualization
• Image Analysis
• High Content Screening
• Machine Vision
• Pharmaceutical Sciences
• Theranostics
• Drug Targeting
• Drug Delivery
• Pharmacokinetics
• Modeling
• Systems Biology
• Bioimaging Probes
• Computer Aided Design

Type of Paper: Review
Title: A Review of Fluorescence Molecular Tomography: Its Past, Present and Hybrid Future
Authors: Florian Stuker ¹, Jorge Ripoll ² and Markus Rudin ^1,3
Affiliation: ¹ Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University and ETH Zurich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 10, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland; E-Mail: stuker@biomed.ee.ethz.ch (F.S.), rudin@biomed.ee.ethz.ch (M.R.)
² Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser - FORTH, Vassilika Vouton, 71110 Heraklion, Greece
³ Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland; E-Mail: jripoll@iesl.forth.gr (J.R.)
Abstract: Fluorescence microscopic imaging is widely used in biomedical research to study molecular and cellular processes in cell culture or tissue samples. This is motivated by the high inherent sensitivity of fluorescence techniques, the spatial resolution that compares favorably with cellular dimensions, the stability of the fluorescent labels used and the sophisticated strategies that have been developed for selectively labeling target molecules. More recently, two and three-dimensional optical imaging methods have also been applied to monitor biological processes in intact biological organisms such as animals or even humans. These whole body imaging approaches have to cope with the fact that biological tissue is a turbid medium, i.e. it is highly scattering, and it strongly absorbs visible light. As a consequence photon propagate in tissue as a diffusion wave and accurate reconstruction of spatial information is demanding. While in vivo optical imaging is a highly sensitive method, the signal is strongly surface weighted, i.e. the signal detected by the same light source will become weaker and broader, the deeper it is located in tissue. Derivation of quantitative information, therefore, requires tomographic techniques such as fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT), which maps the three-dimensional distribution of concentration of a fluorescent probe. Even though FMT does not offer anatomical information, it can be combined with a structural imaging method such as x-ray CT or MRI which will allow mapping molecular information on a high definition anatomical reference, and current trends point in that direction. Today many of the fluorescent assays originally developed for studies in cellular systems have been successfully translated for experimental studies in animals. The opportunity of monitoring molecular processes non-invasively in the intact organism is highly attractive from a diagnostic point of view but even more so for the drug developer, who can use the techniques for proof-of-mechanism and proof-of-efficacy studies.
This review shall elucidate the current status and potential of fluorescence tomography including recent advances in multimodality imaging approaches for preclinical and clinical drug development.
Keywords: fluorescence molecular tomography; biomedical imaging; optical tomography; fluorescence; hybrid imaging