Combined photoacoustic and molecular fluorescence imaging in vivo.

Because of the overwhelming scattering of light in biological tissues, the spatial resolution and imaging depth of conventional fluorescent imaging is unsatisfactory. Therefore, we present a dual modality imaging technique by combining fluorescence imaging with high-resolution noninvasive photoacoustic tomography (PAT) for the study of an animal tumor model. PAT provides high-resolution structural images of tumor angiogenesis, and fluorescence imaging offers high sensitivity to molecular probes for tumor detection.