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Improvements in the robustness and accuracy of bioluminescence tomographic reconstructions of distributed sources within small animals Bradley J. Beattie Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Engineering Science in the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 Bradley J. Beattie All rights reserved ABSTRACT Improvements in the robustness and accuracy of bioluminescence tomographic reconstructions of distributed sources within small animals Bradley J. Beattie High quality three-dimensional bioluminescence tomographic (BLT) images, if available, would constitute a major advance and provide much more useful information than the two-dimensional bioluminescence images that are frequently used today. To-date, high quality BLT images have not been available, largely because of the poor quality of the data being input into the reconstruction process. Many significant confounds are not routinely corrected for and the noise in this data is unnecessarily large and poorly distributed. Moreover, many of the design choices affecting image quality are not well considered, including choices regarding the number and type of filters used when making multispectral measurements and choices regarding the frequency and uniformity of the sampling of both the range and domain of the BLT inverse problem. Finally, progress in BLT image quality is difficult to gauge owing to a lack of realistic gold-standard references that engage the full complexity and uncertainty within a small animal BLT imaging experiment. Within this dissertation, I address all of these issues. I develop a Cerenkov-based gold- standard wherein a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) image can be used to gauge improvements in the accuracy of BLT reconstruction algorithms. In the process of creating this reference, I discover and describe corrections for several confounds that if left uncorrected would introduce artifacts into the BLT images. This includes corrections for the angle of the animal’s skin surface relative to the camera, for the height of each point on the skin surface relative to the focal plane, and for the variation in bioluminescence intensity as a function of luciferin concentration over time. Once applied, I go on to derive equations and algorithms that when employed are able to minimize the noise in the final images under the constraints of a multispectral BLT data acquisition. These equations and algorithms allow for an optimal choice of filters to be made and for the acquisition time to be optimally distributed among those filtered measurements. These optimizations make use of Barrett’s and Moore-Penrose pseudoinverse matrices which also come into play in a paradigm I describe that can be used to guide choices regarding sampling of the domain and range. Table of Contents List of Figures v List of Tables vi 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1. Background and motivation 1 1.2. The BLT inverse problem 5 1.3. Multispectral vs. hyperspectral 6 1.4. Overall Goals and Specific Aims 12 2. SPECIFIC AIM 1: MULTIMODALITY REGISTRATION 14 2.1. Overview 14 2.2. Scanners. 18 2.3. Overview of the registration procedure. 18 2.4. Registration of a 2D image to a 3D image set. 21 2.5. BLI camera model. 22 2.6. BLI camera calibration. 23 i 2.7. Registration accuracy. 24 2.8. Animals and imaging procedures. 26 2.9. Imaging protocols. 28 2.10. Registration accuracy. 29 2.11. Experiments 30 2.12. Light Fall-off Correction. 34 2.13. Discussion 36 3. SPECIFIC AIM 2: CERENKOV QUANTITATION 38 3.1. Overview 38 3.2. Modeling. 41 3.3. Experimental Cerenkov measurements. 49 3.4. Spectral measurements. 52 3.5. Cerenkov efficiency as a function of refractive index. 53 3.6. Cerenkov efficiency as a function of volume. 53 3.7. Region of interest measurements and profiles. 54 ii 3.8. Corrections 55 3.9. Comparisons 60 3.10. Modeled Cerenkov production efficiencies as a function of refractive index. 67 3.11. Modeled Cerenkov point spread functions. 69 3.12. Discussion 69 4. SPECIFIC AIM 3: OPTIMIZED ACQUISITION PROTOCOL 73 4.1. Overview 73 4.2. Camera noise model 75 4.3. Digital mouse phantom 76 4.4. Solving the forward model 77 4.5 Image Reconstruction Methods 80 4.6. Derivation of the optimization expression 84 4.7. Algorithm to select optimal filters 90 4.8. Testing the optimization expression 92 4.9. Two-wavelength LSQ simulation results 94 iii 4.10. Three-wavelength LSQ simulation 97 4.11. Two-wavelength MLEM simulation 98 4.12. Mouse simulations 99 4.13. Guidance for improved conditioning and SNR through optimized sampling 103 4.14. Discussion 107 5. OVERALL SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 109 REFERENCES 112 APPENDIX 121 iv List of Figures 1.1 Artifacts in BLT ..................................................................................................... 1 2.1 Mouse Bed ......................................................................................................... 19 2.2 Transgenic Mouse ............................................................................................. 26 2.3 Light Fall-off with Angle in Animal ...................................................................... 31 2.4 Registered CT, Reflectance and BLI Images .................................................... 32 2.5 Light Flux versus Time Curve ............................................................................ 33 2.6 Parameter Defining Diagram ............................................................................. 34 2.7 Light Fall-off with Angle in Phantom .................................................................. 35 3.1 Cerenkov versus Wavelength, Radioactivity and Height ................................... 56 3.2 Experimental Setup and Radionuclide Cerenkov Results ................................. 61 3.3 Cerenkov Point Spread Function ....................................................................... 65 3.4 Secondary Electron Point Spread Function ....................................................... 66 3.5 Cerenkov versus Refractive Index ..................................................................... 68 4.1 Pathlength Histogram ........................................................................................ 78 4.2 Log-mean and Log-standard-deviation of Pathlength Distribution ..................... 79 4.3 Importance of Politte’s Correction ...................................................................... 84 4.4 Optimal Time Distribution for 2-Wavelength Moore-Penrose Solution ................ 95 4.5 Uncertainty for 2-Wavelength Moore-Penrose Solution ..................................... 96 4.6 Optimal Time Distribution for 3-Wavelengths Moore-Penrose Solution ............. 97 4.7 Uncertainty for 2-Wavelength MLEM Solution ................................................... 98 4.8 Optimal Time Distribution for 2-Wavelength MLEM Solution ............................. 99 v 4.9 Reference Image, Source Spectra and Attenuation ........................................ 100 4.10 Firefly and Cerenkov Optimal Time Distributions ............................................. 101 4.11 Improved MLEM Images from Optimally Sampled Data .................................. 102 4.12 Improved Moore-Penrose Images from Optimally Sampled Data .................... 103 4.13 Optimized Domain Sampling ........................................................................... 106 List of Tables 2.1 Registration Error .............................................................................................. 30 3.1 Radionuclide Abundances ................................................................................. 43 3.2 Ac-225 Daughter Abundances ........................................................................... 44 3.3 Experiment Overview ........................................................................................ 50 3.4 Cerenkov Efficiencies ........................................................................................ 68 3.5 Cerenkov Point Spread Function Widths ........................................................... 69 vi 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. Background and motivation Bioluminescence tomography (BLT) reconstruction algorithms have been available to researchers since Wang first described their theoretical basis in 2004 [1]. Today, BLT reconstruction capabilities are included as standard software accompanying the ubiquitous IVIS bioluminescence imaging systems (Perkin Elmer). However, these algorithms have seen relatively little use, as evidenced in the literature by the relative dearth of articles published that actually make use of BLT. BLT has not been well embraced, I believe, because of the generally poor quality of the BLT reconstructed images (suffering from clear artifacts, see figure 1.1, and because they are often noisy and unstable) and because the accuracy of these images has not been validated under realistic conditions (i.e. researchers don’t trust them to be accurate). It is well recognized that the BLT image reconstruction problem is ill-posed, requiring multispectral measurements to avoid degeneracy and often remains ill-conditioned even when multispectral measurements are made [2-4]. Thus it is typical for even small Figure 1.1 Although the bioluminescent amounts of noise in the measured data to be tumor implanted in the brain of this mouse is roughly spherical, the source distribution greatly amplified during the reconstruction shown here, reconstructed by Chaudhari et al. clearly is not. 1 process, producing images with a large degree