Patent ID: 7321791

Claim:
A method comprising: illuminating a sample to cause the sample to emit radiation, wherein the sample is a living mammal comprising deep tissue supporting a target compound, wherein the emitted radiation comprises emission from the target compound and emission from one or more other components in the sample, wherein the emission from the other components of the sample comprises autofluorescence from one or more layers of tissue in the sample different from a layer of tissue comprising the deep tissue, and wherein the deep tissue is subdermal tissue; spectrally filtering the emitted radiation with each of at least four different spectral weighting functions; storing an image of the spectrally filtered radiation for each of the spectral weighting functions; and processing the stored images to construct a deep tissue image of the sample in which signal from the other compounds is reduced relative to signal from the target compound, wherein processing the stored images comprises constructing the deep tissue image based on a weighted superposition of information in the stored images and at least one emission spectrum for the other components in the sample.