Characterization of natural fluorescence in mice

One important challenge for in-vivo imaging fluorescence in cancer research and related pharmaceutical studies is to discriminate the exogenous fluorescence signal of the specific tagged agents from the natural fluorescence. For mice, natural fluorescence is composed of endogenous fluorescence from organs like the skin, the bladder, etc. and from ingested food. The discrimination between the two kinds of fluorescence makes easy monitoring the targeted tissues. Generally, the amplitude of the fluorescence signal depends on the location and on the amount of injected fluorophore, which is limited in in-vivo experiments. This paper exposes some results of natural fluorescence analysis from in-vivo mice experiments using a time domain small animal fluorescence imaging system: eXplore OptixTM. Fluorescence signals are expressed by a Time Point Spread Function (TPSF) at each scan point. The study uses measures of similarity applied purposely to the TPSF to evaluate the discrepancy and/or the homogeneity of scanned regions of a mouse. These measures allow a classification scheme to be performed on the TPSF's based on their temporal shapes. The work ends by showing how the exogenous fluorescence can be distinguished from natural fluorescence by using the TPSF temporal shape.