Abstract
Optical microscopy is limited to shallow interrogation depths as high-resolution imaging in scattering media is challenging. Current methods require complex and expensive experimental setup or suffer from low resolution. Through gating of photons exiting the scattering media using a restricted numerical aperture (NA) fiber optic plate (FOP), we establish a novel spatio-angular filter imaging device that allows deeper imaging in scattering media. Using dilutions of Intralipid (1-4 v/v%) and a USAF resolution target, it is shown that by reducing the NA of the FOP from 0.55 to 0.17, the interrogation depth improves ~2 times using trans-illumination.
Highlights
Imaging with high resolution of an object embedded in a turbid medium requires controlling the effect of scattered light within the turbid medium so that only ballistic light that has traveled via region of interest is detected
The 0.17 numerical aperture (NA) fiber optic plate (FOP) depicted in an increased interrogation depth when compared to the other imaging setups
A novel Spatio-Angular Filter approach based on numerical aperture gated design was evaluated in terms of the imaging interrogation depths achieved in comparison to standard lens-based setup
Summary
Imaging with high resolution of an object embedded in a turbid medium requires controlling the effect of scattered light within the turbid medium so that only ballistic (no or insignificantly scattered) light that has traveled via region of interest is detected. The existing methods for gating such “ballistic” and “quasi-ballistic” photons include diffuse optical tomography [1], time gating methods [2], interference methods [3,4], polarization gating [5], and physical barrier gating [6,7]. DOT relies on a model of light scattering to reconstruct the paths of photons as they travel through the tissue This uncertainty manifests as blurring in the reconstructed images, such that resolutions between 0.5 and 10 mm are typical [1]. As the near infra-red range of light is significantly less absorbing and scattering as compared to the visible range, this may limit the ability of DOT to detect many of the object’s intrinsic absorption-based features, for which the main absorption region lies is in the visible range (e.g. Hemoglobin)
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