$\mu$NeuFMT: Optical-Property-Adaptive Fluorescence Molecular Tomography via Implicit Neural Representation

TL;DR

This paper introduces $bNeuFMT, a self-supervised fluorescence molecular tomography method that jointly reconstructs fluorophore distribution and tissue optical properties using implicit neural representations, improving robustness and accuracy.

Contribution

The novel contribution is a self-supervised framework that jointly estimates fluorescence and optical properties without prior knowledge or pre-trained models.

Findings

Outperforms conventional and deep learning methods in heterogeneous scenarios

Robustly recovers fluorescence and optical properties even with erroneous initial guesses

Validated through numerical, phantom, and in vivo experiments

Abstract

Fluorescence Molecular Tomography (FMT) is a promising technique for non-invasive 3D visualization of fluorescent probes, but its reconstruction remains challenging due to the inherent ill-posedness and reliance on inaccurate or often-unknown tissue optical properties. While deep learning methods have shown promise, their supervised nature limits generalization beyond training data. To address these problems, we propose $\mu$NeuFMT, a self-supervised FMT reconstruction framework that integrates implicit neural-based scene representation with explicit physical modeling of photon propagation. Its key innovation lies in jointly optimize both the fluorescence distribution and the optical properties ($\mu$) during reconstruction, eliminating the need for precise prior knowledge of tissue optics or pre-conditioned training data. We demonstrate that $\mu$NeuFMT robustly recovers accurate fluorophore distributions and optical coefficients even with severely erroneous initial values (0.5$\times$ to 2$\times$ of ground truth). Extensive numerical, phantom, and in vivo validations show that $\mu$NeuFMT outperforms conventional and supervised deep learning approaches across diverse heterogeneous scenarios. Our work establishes a new paradigm for robust and accurate FMT reconstruction, paving the way for more reliable molecular imaging in complex clinically related scenarios, such as fluorescence guided surgery.