Quantitative Bioluminescence Tomography-guided System for Conformal Irradiation In Vivo

Although cone-beam CT (CBCT) has been used to guide irradiation for pre-clinical radiotherapy(RT) research, it is limited to localize soft tissue target especially in a low imaging contrast environment. Knowledge of target shape is a fundamental need for RT. Without such information to guide radiation, normal tissue can be irradiated unnecessarily, leading to experimental uncertainties. Recognition of this need led us to develop quantitative bioluminescence tomography (QBLT), which provides strong imaging contrast to localize optical targets. We demonstrated its capability of guiding conformal RT using an orthotopic bioluminescent glioblastoma (GBM) model. With multi-projection and multi-spectral bioluminescence imaging and a novel spectral derivative method, our QBLT system is able to reconstruct GBM with localization accuracy