Hardware Control of a Near Infrared Fluorescence System : LabVIEW Programming and Evaluation

Abstract: Indocyanine green (ICG) is a fluorescent dye used as an indicator in medicine and surgery. The maximum absorption wavelength of ICG is at 785 nm, while the maximum emission is around 820 nm. ICG is nontoxic and is rapidly excreted into the bile. Near infrared (NIR) fluorescence imaging or spectroscopy offer new settings for seeing the blood vessels, and also in oncological applications for finding sentinel lymph nodes (SLN) to investigate if the cancer has spread from the tumor to the lymphatic system. Given the aforementioned applications, the aim of this thesis was to develop a hardware control and a user interface in LabVIEW, and to evaluate the software, as well as the instrumentation using phantom measurements.The system consisted of a spectrometer, a laser (785 ± 5 nm) for ICG excitation, optical filters, and a fiber optical probe containing five fibers for light excitation, and one for light collection. The basic LabVIEW program designed for the spectrometer was used, and additional features were added such as the recording functions, online measurements, opening of the recorded files, saving comments, and a loop was created for the laser control. Optical phantoms were prepared to model tissue for measurements using 20 % intralipid that gave μs = 298 mm−¹ at the excitation wavelength. Agar 1% w/v and ICG were added to the phantoms using different fluorophore concentrations of 2 μg/mL, 10 μg/mL, 20 μg/mL, 25 μg/mL, and 40 μg/mL. The objective was to perform controlled measurements of steady state ICG fluorescence, the dynamics of photobleaching at different concentrations, and to find the optimal ICG concentration for obtaining the maximum fluorescence intensity. The light to excite ICG fluorescence emission was provided by using a laser output power of 10.4 mW and 200 ms of integration time in the spectrometer for optimal measurements.Measurements using the different gel phantoms showed maximum fluorescence ICG concentration to be between 16 μg/mL and 20 μg/mL. Moreover, photobleaching measurements showed to be ICG concentration-dependent, where those concentrations higher than the optimal one incrementally photobleached with time after being exposed to light. Higher concentrations presented an incremental photobleaching where they first reached a maximum peak and then the intensity decayed with time. Additionally, laser reflection at 782 nm showed that the reflection increased with time ranging from 130% – 460% as the ICG photobleached to 50% of its initial value. Normalization of ICG by the laser reflection signal was investigated to compensate for the intensity variations due to the measurement parameters including the distance from the light source to the target, and the angle of inclination of the probe. The lowest ICG concentration detectable by the system was 0.05 μg/mL.In conclusion, a LabVIEW hardware control and user interface was developed for controlling the spectrometer and the laser. Several measurements were made using the different phantoms, where the optimal concentration of ICG was estimated. It was shown that ICG fluorescence intensity and photobleaching behavior were dependent on the concentration. The results gave suggestions for future experimental design.