Locating and classifying fluorescent tags behind turbid layers using time-resolved inversion

Using time resolved and sparse optimization framework to locate and classify fluorescent markers hidden behind turbid layer.

Link to paper: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150413/ncomms7796/full/ncomms7796.html

Project page: http://web.media.mit.edu/~guysatat/fl/

The use of fluorescent probes and the recovery of their lifetimes allow for significant advances in many imaging systems, in particular medical imaging systems. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate reconstructing the locations and lifetimes of fluorescent markers hidden behind a turbid layer. This opens the door to various applications for non-invasive diagnosis, analysis, flowmetry and inspection. The method is based on a time-resolved measurement which captures information about both fluorescence lifetime and spatial position of the probes. To reconstruct the scene the method relies on a sparse optimization framework to invert time-resolved measurements. This wide-angle technique does not rely on coherence, and does not require the probes to be directly in line of sight of the camera, making it potentially suitable for long-range imaging.