Lensless ghost imaging through the strongly scattering medium

Lensless ghost imaging has attracted much interest in recent years due to its profound physics and potential applications. In this paper we report studies of the robust properties of the lensless ghost imaging system with a pseudo-thermal light source in a strongly scattering medium. The effects of the positions of the strong medium on the ghost imaging are investigated. In the lensless ghost imaging system, a pseudo-thermal light is split into two correlated beams by a beam splitter. One beam goes to a charge-coupled detector camera, labeled as CCD2. The other beam goes to an object and then is collected in another charge-coupled detector camera, labeled as CCD1, which serves as a bucket detector. When the strong medium, a pane of ground glass disk, is placed between the object and CCD1, the bucket detector, the quality of ghost imaging is barely affected and a good image could still be obtained. The quality of the ghost imaging can also be maintained, even when the ground glass is rotating, which is the strongest scattering medium so far. However, when the strongly scattering medium is present in the optical path from the light source to CCD2 or the object, the lensless ghost imaging system hardly retrieves the image of the object. A theoretical analysis in terms of the second-order correlation function is also provided.

Experimental Detection of Depth of Field for a Thermal Light Lensless Ghost Imaging System

We propose optical experiments to study the depth of field for a thermal light lensless ghost imaging system. It is proved that the diaphragm is an important factor to influence the depth of field, and the ghost images of two detected objects with longitudinal distance less than the depth of field can be achieved simultaneously. The longitudinal coherence scale of the thermal light lensless ghost imaging determines the depth of field. Theoretical analysis can well explain the experimental results.

Lensless diffractive imaging with ultra-broadbandtable-top sources: from infrared to extreme-ultravioletwavelengths

Lensless imaging is an approach to microscopy in which a high-resolution image of an object is reconstructed from one or more measured diffraction patterns,providing a solution in situations where the use of imaging optics is not possible.However,current lensless imaging methods are typically limited by the need for a light source with a narrow,stable and accurately known spectrum.We have developed a general approach to lensless imaging without spectral bandwidth limitations or sample requirements.We use two time-delayed coherent light pulses and show that scanning the pulse-to-pulse time delay allows the reconstruction of diffraction-limited images for all the spectral components in the pulse.In addition,we introduce an iterative phase retrieval algorithm that uses these spectrally resolved Fresnel diffraction patterns to obtain high-resolution images of complex extended objects.We demonstrate this two-pulse imaging method with octave-spanning visible light sources,in both transmission and reflection geometries,and with broadband extreme-ultraviolet radiation from a high-harmonic generation source.Our approach enables effective use of low-flux ultra-broadband sources,such as table-top high-harmonic generation systems,for high-resolution imaging.

Portable lensless wide-field microscopy imaging platform based on digital inline holography and multi-frame pixel super-resolution

In this paper,an irregular displacement-based lensless wide-field microscopy imaging platform is presented by combining digital in-line holography and computational pixel super-resolution using multi-frame processing.The samples are illuminated by a nearly coherent illumination system,where the hologram shadows are projected into a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor-based imaging sensor.To increase the resolution,a multi-frame pixel resolution approach is employed to produce a single holographic image from multiple frame observations of the scene,with small planar displacements.Displacements are resolved by a hybrid approach:(i)alignment of the LR images by a fast feature-based registration method,and(ii)fine adjustment of the sub-pixel information using a continuous optimization approach designed to find the global optimum solution.Numerical method for phase-retrieval is applied to decode the signal and reconstruct the morphological details of the analyzed sample.The presented approach was evaluated with various biological samples including sperm and platelets,whose dimensions are in the order of a few microns.The obtained results demonstrate a spatial resolution of 1.55 μm on a field-of-view of<30 mm^(2).

Multicore fiber with thermally expanded cores for increased collection efficiency in endoscopic imaging

Fiber-based endoscopes are promising for minimally invasive in vivo biomedical diagnostics.Multicore fibers offer high resolution imaging.However,to avoid image deterioration induced by inter-core coupling,significant spacing between cores is required,which limits the active image guiding area of the fiber.Thus,they suffer from low light collection efficiency and decreased signal-to-noise ratio.In this paper,we present a method to increase the collection efficiency by thermally expanding the cores at the facet of a multicore fiber.This expansion is based on the diffusion of doping material of the cores,thus the fiber’s original outer diameter is preserved.By enlarging the core diameter by a factor of 2.8,we increase the intensity of the transmitted light by a factor of up to 2.3.This results in a signal-to-noise ratio increase by a factor of up to 4.6 and significant improvement in the image contrast.The improvement increases with increasing working distance but is already prominent for as small working distance as 0.5 mm.The feasibility of the method is proved experimentally by lensless single-shot imaging of a test chart and incoherent light reflected from clusters of microbeads.The demonstrated approach is an important tool especially in imaging of biological specimens,for which phototoxicity must be avoided,and therefore,high collection efficiency is required.

Exploiting scattering media for exploring 3D objects

Scattering media,such as diffused glass and biological tissue,are usually treated as obstacles in imaging.To cope with the random phase introduced by a turbid medium,most existing imaging techniques recourse to either phase compensation by optical means or phase recovery using iterative algorithms,and their applications are often limited to two-dimensional imaging.In contrast,we utilize the scattering medium as an unconventional imaging lens and exploit its lens-like properties for lensless threedimensional(3D)imaging with diffraction-limited resolution.Our spatially incoherent lensless imaging technique is simple and capable of variable focusing with adjustable depths of focus that enables depth sensing of 3D objects that are concealed by the diffusing medium.Wide-field imaging with diffraction-limited resolution is verified experimentally by a single-shot recording of the 1951 USAF resolution test chart,and 3D imaging and depth sensing are demonstrated by shifting focus over axially separated objects.