An imaging method and apparatus, for small animal imaging, in which the object to be examined is treated with an activatable optical contrast medium, which preferably has a metabolically activatable mark, and irradiated by a first optical excitation source. The first radiation reflected from the object is detected by a first optical detector, and simultaneously irradiated by a second tomographic excitation source, while the second radiation transferred from the object is detected by a second tomographic detector. In this case, the second tomographic excitation source advantageously generates an X-ray radiation, so that the resulting CT image can be superposed with the optical image in order to evaluate morphological and functional information.
Imaging method and imaging apparatus, in particular for small animal imaging