Fluorescence diffuse optical tomography measurements for tissue engineering

Currents eorts in tissue engineering (TE) are directed towards growing 3D volumes of tissues. In response to TE needs, we are developing a non-invasive technique based on fluorescence diuse optical tomography (FDOT) to image in 3D, via fluorescence labelling, the formation of micro-blood vessels in tissue cultures grown on biodegradable scaolds in bioreactor conditions. In the present work, we use a non-contact FDOT setup developed for small animal imaging for our measurements. We present experimental results showing the feasability to localize a fluorophore-filled 500μm capillary immersed in a scattering medium contained in a cylindrically-shaped glass tube. These conditions are representative of experiments to be carried on real tissue cultures. Time-resolved scattering-fluorescence measurements are made via Time-Correlated Single Photon Counting (TCSPC) and we use numerical constant fraction discrimination (NCFD) to obtain primary localization information from our time-resolved data.