Optical projection tomography (OPT) is a 3D mesoscopic imaging modality that can utilise absorption or fluorescence contrast and is widely applied to fixed and live samples in the mm-cm scale. We present OPTImAL, an open-source research-grade implementation of modular OPT hardware and software that has been designed to be widely accessible by using low-cost components, including LED excitation and cooled CMOS cameras. Both the hardware and software are modular and flexible in their implementation, enabling rapid switching between sample size scales and supporting compressive sensing to reconstruct images from undersampled sparse OPT data, e.g., to facilitate rapid imaging with low photobleaching/phototoxicity. We also explore a simple implementation of focal scanning OPT to achieve higher resolution, which entails the use of a fan-beam geometry reconstruction method to account for variation in magnification.

This dataset consists of raw OPT (optical projection tomography) data, i.e. projection images of samples, recorded by an (sCMOS or cooled CMOS) camera as the sample is rotated.

Volumetric images may then be reconstructed from these provided sets of projection data. Software is provided to do so in the associated GitHub repository. (https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/OPTImAL)

The provided datasets all comprise fluorescence images - widefield excitation illumination is incident on the sample, and the emitted fluorescence signal is recorded on the camera, with the excitation illumination blocked from reaching the camera sensor through use of filters.

Select projection datasets have been deconvolved with a projection of (modelled) system 3D PSF. These are indicated in the folder name and information file, and the raw camera projection images are also provided in each case.