Abstract
The acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) is one of the most used techniques for hyperspectral imaging (HSI), and is capable of fast and random wavelength access, high diffraction efficiency, and good spectral resolution. Typical AOTF-HSI works with linearly polarized light; hence, its throughput is limited for randomly polarized applications such as fluorescence imaging. We report an AOTF-based imager design using both polarized components of the input light. The imager is designed to operate in the 450 to 800 nm region with resolutions in the range of 1.5–4 nm. The performance characterization results show that this design leads to 68% improvement in throughput for randomly polarized light. We also compared its performance against a liquid crystal tunable filter (LCTF)-based imager.
Highlights
Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) was originally developed for remote sensing applications more than three decades ago [1]
Our results demonstrated that this technique significantly improves the acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) setup as well as an liquid crystal tunable filter (LCTF)-HSI imager
Our results demonstrated that this technique significantly throughput of improves the throughput of AOTF imagers
Summary
Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) was originally developed for remote sensing applications more than three decades ago [1]. In HSI, a large number of narrow band data points in the spectral domain are sampled, compared to only three or four overlapping wide spectral regions in conventional color images. The additional spectral information is capable of identifying visually indistinguishable features within a large region of interest (ROI) [2,3]. Clinical applications of HSI include retinal vascular inspection [14], early detection of gastric cancer [15], tongue lesion classification [16], and intraoperative tumors residuals detection [17]. In addition to using a filter wheel with a number of bandpass filters [18], acousto-optic tunable filters (AOTFs) and liquid crystal tunable filters (LCTFs) are commonly used because they can freely select spectral band at high speed (ms/step or faster) and contain no mechanical moving parts [3]
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