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7.1 Introduction
Important new developments in the eld of biomedical optical
imaging (OI) allow for unprecedented visualization of the tis-
sue microstructure and enable quantitative mapping of disease-
specic endogenous and exogenous substances (Balas 2009).
Spectral imaging (SI) is one of the most promising OI modali-
ties, belonging to this general eld, and it will be reviewed in
more detail in this chapter.
SI combines spectroscopy with imaging. A spectral imager
provides spectral information at each pixel of a two-dimensional
(2D) detector array. e SI systems acquire a three-dimensional
(3D) data set of spectral and spatial inform ...