Abstract
Imaging of a weak target hidden behind a scattering medium can be significantly confounded by glare. We report a method, termed coherence gated negation (CGN), that uses destructive optical interference to suppress glare and allow improved imaging of a weak target. As a demonstration, we show that by permuting through a set range of amplitude and phase values for a reference beam interfering with the optical field from the glare and target reflection, we can suppress glare by an order of magnitude, even when the optical wavefront is highly disordered. This strategy significantly departs from conventional coherence gating methods in that CGN actively "gates out" the unwanted optical contributions while conventional methods "gate in" the target optical signal. We further show that the CGN method can outperform conventional coherence gating image quality in certain scenarios by more effectively rejecting unwanted optical contributions.
Highlights
The ability to optically illuminate and image a target hidden behind a scattering medium is important in many applications, including transportation, remote sensing, biomedicine, and astronomy
The returning light, which consists of light that is backscattered by the scattering medium as well as light reflected from the target, is captured by the imaging system, resulting in an image of the target obscured by glare
In this series of experiments, we demonstrated the differences and advantages of coherence gated negation (CGN) compared to hardware-based time-of-flight glare reduction systems and conventional coherence gating methods
Summary
The ability to optically illuminate and image a target hidden behind a scattering medium is important in many applications, including transportation, remote sensing, biomedicine, and astronomy. The degradation of image quality in such scenarios can generally be ascribed to two effects: the optical wavefront distortion caused by the scattering medium and the glare from light backscattered from the scattering medium. Recent developments in wavefront shaping and adaptive optics have shown great promise in addressing the wavefront distortion challenge [1,2,3,4,5,6]. These methods have improved the imaging resolution beyond what was thought possible even a decade ago. The objects you would like to observe are unlikely to be fluorescent, and you cannot rely on having an independent light source behind the objects to provide you with a transmission imaging geometry
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
