Assessment of asthmatic inflammation using hybrid fluorescence molecular tomography–x-ray computed tomography

Nuclear imaging plays a critical role in asthma research but is limited in its readings of biology due to the short-lived signals of radio-isotopes. We employed hybrid fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT) and x-ray computed tomography (XCT) for the assessment of asthmatic inflammation based on resolving cathepsin activity and matrix metalloproteinase activity in dust mite, ragweed, and Aspergillus species-challenged mice. The reconstructed multimodal fluorescence distribution showed good correspondence with ex vivo cryosection images and histological images, confirming FMT-XCT as an interesting alternative for asthma research.