Optical imaging in pills: techniques, instruments and applications


https://doi.org/10.4081/microscopie.2015.5628
Vol. 24 No. 2 (2015)
Submitted: 12 November 2015
Accepted: 12 November 2015
Published: 12 November 2015
optical imaging, bioluminescence, fluorescence, Cerenkov luminescence imaging, in vivo imaging
Abstract Views: 465
PDF: 909
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Authors

Optical imaging (OI) is an emerging field based on the detection of light photons in the ultraviolet, visible and infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. According to the definition, the term “optical imaging” typically excludes classical microscopy techniques in favour of larger scale imaging methods which are devoted to the acquisition of images of small (few centimetres) sized samples. Biomedical OI is focused on the detection of biological samples with special attention to the in vivo acquisitions. Recent development of very sensitive detectors (photomultipliers and charge coupled devices – CCDs) allowed the detection of very weak light signal in biological samples not only in the visible range but also in the near infrared (NIR) region of the spectrum, which is noteworthy for the biological applications. The parallel advance of the light sources (lasers and LEDs) allowed to produce high intensity light beam with very powerful optical characteristics at relatively low costs. These two technological improvements, combined with the advances in the chemical field by the synthesis of new contrast agents with luminescent properties, led to the increasing importance of the OI techniques in the molecular imaging landscape. Here we review the conceptual bases of OI, the three main techniques (i.e. Bioluminescence, Fluorescence, and Cerenkov luminescence imaging), and some applications of OI in our laboratory.

Boschi, F., & Calderan, L. (2015). Optical imaging in pills: techniques, instruments and applications. Microscopie, 24(2), 38–44. https://doi.org/10.4081/microscopie.2015.5628

PAGEPress has chosen to apply the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) to all manuscripts to be published.

An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions:

  1. the author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
  2. a complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Citations

Crossref
Scopus
Google Scholar
Europe PMC