Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, Massachusetts 02129, USA. ankumar@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu
We derive a novel algorithm to recover the in vivo distributions of fluorophores based on an asymptotic life-time analysis of time-domain fluorescence measurements with turbid tissue. We experimentally demonstrate the advantage offered by this method in localizing fluorophores with distinct lifetimes. This algorithm has wide applicability for diagnostic fluorescence imaging in the presence of several-centimeter-thick biological tissue, since fluorescence lifetime is a sensitive indicator of local tissue environment and interactions at the molecular level.