A hybrid clustering algorithm for multiple-source resolving in bioluminescence tomography

Bioluminescence tomography is a preclinical imaging modality to locate and quantify internal bioluminescent sources from surface measurements, which experienced rapid growth in the last 10 years. However, multiple-source resolving remains a challenging issue in BLT. In this study, it is treated as an unsupervised pattern recognition problem based on the reconstruction result, and a novel hybrid clustering algorithm combining the advantages of affinity propagation (AP) and K-means is developed to identify multiple sources automatically. Moreover, we incorporate the clustering analysis into a general multiple-source reconstruction framework, which can provide stable reconstruction and accurate resolving result without providing the number of targets. Numerical simulations and in vivo experiments on 4T1-luc2 mouse model were conducted to assess the performance of the proposed method in multiple-source resolving. The encouraging results demonstrate significant effectiveness and potential of our method in preclinical BLT applications.