Efficient FMT reconstruction based on L₁-αL₂ regularization via half-quadratic splitting and a two-probe separation...

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Imaging
• Molecular Imaging
• Tomography

Background:

• Fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT) offers noninvasive, high-contrast 3D in vivo imaging with clinical potential for tumor detection.
• Limited surface fluorescence in FMT leads to ill-posed reconstruction problems and suboptimal imaging results.
• Existing FMT methods struggle with precise localization and morphological reconstruction, hindering clinical translation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To enhance the temporal and spatial resolution of FMT reconstruction.
• To improve the accuracy of in vivo tumor detection and characterization using FMT.
• To facilitate the clinical translation of FMT by addressing reconstruction challenges.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing two different emission fluorescent probes for dual-source imaging.
• Implementing L1-L2 regularization with a weighting factor (α > 1) to promote sparsity.
• Employing a half-quadratic splitting alternating optimization (HQSAO) iterative algorithm for reconstruction.

Main Results:

• The HQSAO algorithm demonstrated superior positioning accuracy and morphology distribution in shorter reconstruction times.
• In vivo experiments confirmed the algorithm's effectiveness in preserving light source information and suppressing artifacts.
• Dual fluorescent probe imaging significantly improved dual light source separation and reconstruction quality compared to single probes.

Conclusions:

• The proposed FMT reconstruction strategy using dual probes and the HQSAO algorithm significantly enhances imaging quality.
• This method overcomes key limitations in FMT, offering better localization and 3D morphology reconstruction.
• The improved performance shows strong potential for advancing FMT in clinical tumor detection and diagnosis.