Open AccessContrast improvement in indocyanine green fluorescence sensing in thick tissue using a time-gating method
Author(s) -
Goro Nishimura
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
biomedical optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.362
H-Index - 86
ISSN - 2156-7085
DOI - 10.1364/boe.10.001234
Subject(s) - gating , fluorescence , indocyanine green , imaging phantom , optics , fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy , contrast (vision) , materials science , signal (programming language) , detector , biomedical engineering , computer science , physics , medicine , physiology , programming language
Indocyanine green-based fluorescence imaging techniques are very powerful in clinical applications, but the imaging is restricted to the signal from the near-surface region of tissue. Here, we focus on the method to discriminate the fluorescence signal from the background using a time-domain gating technique. The contrast of the fluorescence image from a fluorescence object at more than 1 cm depth in a meat phantom could be enhanced about 4-5 times relative to the continuous wave method if the time-gate range was properly selected. Further, a Monte Carlo simulation with a simple background model indicates that a shorter source and detector distance is more effective to improve the contrast. The simple time-gating method will enable a highly sensitive fluorescence detection in thick tissue.