We propose a collinear optical Kerr effect (OKE) based time-gate configuration with low coherence illumination source, derived from the supercontinuum (SC) generated by focusing the femtosecond laser pulses inside water. At first the spectral broadening in SC generation and corresponding changes in its coherence properties are studied and then a narrow band of wavelengths is extracted to use as the probe beam in the OKE-based time-gate configuration. The gate timings and spatial resolution of the time-gated images are also investigated. The low coherence of the probe ensures that the artifacts due to speckles from the laser are reduced to a minimum. To illustrate this a comparison of the time-resolved images of the fuel sprays obtained with this configuration has been made with the images obtained with the collinear, dual color configuration of the optical gate with coherent illumination.
We present an optical Kerr effect based time-gate with the collinear incidence of the pump and probe beams at the Kerr medium, liquid carbon disulfide, for ballistic imaging of the high-pressure fuel sprays. The probe pulse used to illuminate the object under study is extracted from the supercontinuum generated by tightly focusing intense femtosecond laser pulses inside water, thereby destroying their coherence. The optical imaging spatial resolution and gate timings are investigated and compared with a similar setup without supercontinuum generation, where the probe is still coherent. And fin…
The coherence holography offers an unconventional way to reconstruct the hologram where an incoherent light illumination is used for reconstruction purposes, and object encoded into the hologram is reconstructed as the distribution of the complex coherence function. Measurement of the coherence function usually requires an interferometric setup and array detectors. This paper presents an entirely new idea of reconstruction of the complex coherence function in the coherence holography without an interferometric setup. This is realized by structured pattern projections on the incoherent source s…
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)（韩国科学技术院）；KAIST Institute for Health Science and Technology, KAIST（韩国科学技术院健康科学与技术研究所）；Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering, KAIST（韩国科学技术院医学科学与工程研究生院）；Department of Mechanical Engineering, KAIST（韩国科学技术院机械工程系）；Graduate School of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, KAIST（韩国科学技术院干细胞与再生生物学研究生院）；Department of Pathology, Gangnam Severance Hospital, Yonsei University College of Medicine（延世大学医学院江南世福兰斯医院病理科）；Center for Genome Engineering, Institute for Basic Science（基础科学研究院基因组工程中心）；BioMedical Research Center (BMRC), KAIST（韩国科学技术院生物医学研究中心）；Tomocube Inc.（Tomocube公司）
We demonstrate a VECSEL (vertical external cavity surface emitting laser) based degenerate source with an adjustable degree of spatial coherence that is electrically pumped, mechanically compact and supports continuous-wave emission. The laser operation can be switched between a large number of mutually incoherent spatial modes and few-mode operation at little power loss. This technology allows multimodality imaging, where low spatial coherence illumination is used for traditional high-speed video-microscopy and high spatial coherence illumination is used to extract dynamic information of flow…
Illumination coherence plays a major role in various imaging systems, from microscopy, metrology, digital holography, optical coherence tomography, to ultrasound imaging. Here, we present a systematic study on the effects of degrees of spatiotemporal coherence of an illumination (DSTCI) on imaging quality. An optical field with arbitrary DSTCI was decomposed into wavelets with constituent spatiotemporal frequencies, and the effects on image quality were quantitatively investigated. The results show the synergistic effects on reduction of speckle noise when DSTCI is decreased. This study presen…
Many imaging applications require increasingly bright illumination sources, motivating the replacement of conventional thermal light sources with light emitting diodes (LEDs), superluminescent diodes (SLDs) and lasers. Despite their brightness, lasers and SLDs are poorly suited for full-field imaging applications because their high spatial coherence leads to coherent artifacts known as speckle that corrupt image formation. We recently demonstrated that random lasers can be engineered to provide low spatial coherence. Here, we exploit the low spatial coherence of specifically-designed random la…
The concept of cross density of states characterizes the intrinsic spatial coherence of complex photonic or plasmonic systems, independently on the illumination conditions. Using this tool and the associated intrinsic coherence length, we demonstrate unambiguously the spatial squeezing of eigenmodes on disordered fractal metallic films, thus clarifying a basic issue in plasmonics.
The spatial coherence of laser sources has limited their application to parallel imaging and projection due to coherent artifacts, such as speckle. In contrast, traditional incoherent light sources, such as thermal sources or light emitting diodes (LEDs), provide relatively low power per independent spatial mode. Here, we present a chip-scale, electrically-pumped semiconductor laser based on a novel design, demonstrating high power per mode with much lower spatial coherence than conventional laser sources. The laser resonator was fabricated with a chaotic, D-shaped cavity optimized to achieve …
The orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light holds great promise for applications in optical communication, super-resolution imaging, and high-dimensional quantum computing. However, the spatio-temporal coherence of the light source has been essential for generating OAM beams, as incoherent ambient light would result in polychromatic and obscured OAM beams in the visible spectrum. Here, we extend the applications of OAM to ambient lighting conditions. By miniaturizing spiral phase plates and integrating them with structural color filters, we achieve spatio-temporal coherence using only an incoh…
An efficient method to tune the spatial coherence of a degenerate laser over a broad range with minimum variation in the total output power is presented. It is based on varying the diameter of a spatial filter inside the laser cavity. The number of lasing modes supported by the degenerate laser can be controlled from 1 to 320,000, with less than a 50% change in the total output power. We show that a degenerate laser designed for low spatial coherence can be used as an illumination source for speckle-free microscopy that is 9 orders of magnitude brighter than conventional thermal light.
The complete characterization of spatial coherence is difficult because the mutual coherence function is a complex-valued function of four independent variables. This difficulty limits the ability of controlling and optimizing spatial coherence in a broad range of key applications. Here we propose a method for measuring the complete mutual coherence function, which does not require any prior knowledge and can be scaled to measure arbitrary coherence properties for any wavelength. Our method can also be used to retrieve objects illuminated by partially coherent beam with unknown coherence prope…
We describe a method of low-coherence interferometry based optical profilometry using standard light-emitting diode (LED) illumination and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors. A line-field illumination strategy allows for the simultaneous measurement of many points in space. Micron scale accuracy and resolution are achieved and demonstrated using a variety of targets.
The invention of lasers 60 years ago is one of the greatest breakthroughs in modern optics. Throughout the years, lasers have enabled major scientific and technological advancements, and have been exploited in numerous applications due to their advantages such as high brightness and high coherence. However, the high spatial coherence of laser illumination is not always desirable, as it can cause adverse artifacts such as speckle noise. To reduce the spatial coherence, novel laser cavity geometries and alternative feedback mechanisms have been developed. By tailoring the spatial and spectral pr…
An analytical approach describing properties of focused partially coherent X-ray beams is presented. The method is based on the results of statistical optics and gives both the beam size and transverse coherence length at any distance behind an optical element. In particular, here we consider Gaussian Schell-model beams and thin optical elements. Limiting cases of incoherent and fully coherent illumination of the focusing element are discussed. The effect of the beam defining aperture, typically used in combination with focusing elements at synchrotron sources to improve transverse coherence, …
A metasurface hologram combines fine spatial resolution and large viewing angles with a planar form factor and compact size. However, it suffers coherent artifacts originating from electromagnetic cross-talk between closely packed meta-atoms and fabrication defects of nanoscale features. Here, we introduce an efficient method to remove all artifacts by fine-tuning the spatial coherence of illumination. Our method is implemented with a degenerate cavity laser, which allows precise, continuous tuning of spatial coherence over a wide range with little variation in emission spectrum and total powe…
Usually, off-axis digital holographic microscopy requires a coherent light source in order to record a full-field hologram. Nevertheless, a LASER-based illumination leads to a non-negligible coherent noise, decreasing then the imaging quality. We hereby report a simple method to reduce the coherent noise contribution using a low-temporal-coherence illumination while maintaining a large interference area. A diffraction grating is hence introduced in the reference arm of the interferometer, allowing the coherence plane of the reference beam to be tilted following angular dispersion. The phase pl…
We develop a green light source with low spatial coherence via intracavity frequency doubling of a solid-state degenerate laser. The second harmonic emission supports many more transverse modes than the fundamental emission, and exhibit lower spatial coherence. A strong suppression of speckle formation is demonstrated for both fundamental and second harmonic beams. Using the green emission for fluorescence excitation, we show the coherent artifacts are removed from the full-field fluorescence images. The high power, low spatial coherence and good directionality makes the green degenerate laser…
Coherent ptychographic imaging experiments often discard over 99.9 % of the flux from a light source to define the coherence of an illumination. Even when coherent flux is sufficient, the stability required during an exposure is another important limiting factor. Partial coherence analysis can considerably reduce these limitations. A partially coherent illumination can often be written as the superposition of a single coherent illumination convolved with a separable translational kernel. In this paper we propose the Gradient Decomposition of the Probe (GDP), a model that exploits translational…
Imaging the propagation of light in time and space is crucial in optics, notably for the study of complex media. We here demonstrate the passive measurement of time-dependent Green's functions between every point at the surface of a strongly scattering medium by means of low coherence interferometry. The experimental access to this Green's matrix is essential since it contains all the information about the complex trajectories of light within the medium. In particular, the spatio-temporal spreading of the diffusive halo and the coherent backscattering effect can be locally investigated in the …
Quantitative phase microscopy (QPM) is often based on recording an object-reference interference pattern and its further phase demodulation. We propose Pseudo Hilbert Phase Microscopy (PHPM) where we combine pseudo thermal light source illumination and Hilbert spiral transform phase demodulation to achieve hybrid hardware-software-driven noise robustness and increase in resolution of single-shot coherent QPM. Those advantageous features stem from physically altering the laser spatial coherence and numerically restoring spectrally overlapped object spatial frequencies. Capabilities of the PHPM …
High harmonic generation (HHG) is an established means of producing coherent, short wavelength, ultrafast pulses from a compact set-up. Table-top high-harmonic sources are increasingly being used to image physical and biological systems using emerging techniques such as coherent diffraction imaging and ptychography. These novel imaging methods require coherent illumination, and it is therefore important to both characterize the spatial coherence of high-harmonic beams and understand the processes which limit this property. Here we investigate the near- and far-field spatial properties of high-…
The potential for improving the penetration depth of optical coherence tomography systems by using increasingly longer wavelength light sources has been known since the inception of the technique in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, the development of mid-infrared optical coherence tomography has long been challenged by the maturity and fidelity of optical components in this spectral region, resulting in slow acquisition, low sensitivity, and poor axial resolution. In this work, a mid-infrared spectral-domain optical coherence tomography system operating at 4 micron central wavelength with an axi…
Light shaping facilitates the preparation and detection of optical states and underlies many applications in communications, computing, and imaging. In this Letter, we generalize light shaping to the quantum domain. We show that patterns of phase modulation for classical laser light can also shape higher orders of spatial coherence, allowing deterministic tailoring of high-dimensional quantum entanglement. By modulating spatially entangled photon pairs, we create periodic, topological, and random patterns of quantum illumination, without effect on intensity. We then structure the quantum illum…
We demonstrate that simultaneous application of optical clearing agents (OCAs) and complex wavefront shaping in optical coherence tomography (OCT) can provide significant enhancement of the penetration depth and imaging quality. OCA reduces optical inhomogeneity of a highly scattering sample, and the wavefront shaping of illumination light controls multiple scattering, resulting in an enhancement of the penetration depth and signal-to-noise ratio. A tissue phantom study shows that concurrent applications of OCA and wavefront shaping successfully operate in OCT imaging. The penetration depth en…
For quantitative phase imaging (QPI) based on transport-of-intensity equation (TIE), partially coherent illumination provides speckle-free imaging, compatibility with brightfield microscopy, and transverse resolution beyond coherent diffraction limit. Unfortunately, in a conventional microscope with circular illumination aperture, partial coherence tends to diminish the phase contrast, exacerbating the inherent noise-to-resolution tradeoff in TIE imaging, resulting in strong low-frequency artifacts and compromised imaging resolution. Here, we demonstrate how these issues can be effectively add…
Visual object recognition is one of the most important perception functions for a wide range of intelligent machines. A conventional recognition process begins with forming a clear optical image of the object, followed by its computer analysis. In contrast, it is possible to carry out recognition without imaging by using coherent illumination and directly analyzing the optical interference pattern of the scattered light as captured by an image sensor. Here we show that such direct visual recognition can overcome traditional limitations of imaging optics to realize excellent recognition without…
We report on a theoretical model for image formation in full-field optical coherence tomography (FFOCT). Because the spatial incoherence of the illumination acts as a virtual confocal pinhole in FFOCT, its imaging performance is equivalent to a scanning time-gated coherent confocal microscope. In agreement with optical experiments enabling a precise control of aberrations, FFOCT is shown to have nearly twice the resolution of standard imaging at moderate aberration level. Beyond a rigorous study on the sensitivity of FFOCT with respect to aberrations, this theoretical model paves the way towar…
We demonstrate a three-dimensional (3D) optical diffraction tomographic technique with optimal frequency combination (OFC-ODT) for the 3D quantitative phase imaging of unlabeled specimens. Three sets of through-focus intensity images are captured under an annular aperture and two circular apertures with different coherence parameters. The 3D phase optical transfer functions (POTF) corresponding to different illumination apertures are combined to obtain an optimally synthesized frequency response, achieving high-quality, low-noise 3D reconstructions with imaging resolution up to the incoherent …
Spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) is a widely used and minimally invaive technique for bio-medical imaging [1]. SD-OCT typically relies on the use of superluminescent diodes (SLD), which provide a low-noise and broadband optical spectrum. Recent advances in photonic chipscale frequency combs [2, 3] based on soliton formation in photonic integrated microresonators provide an chipscale alternative illumination scheme for SD-OCT. Yet to date, the use of such soliton microcombs in OCT has not yet been analyzed. Here we explore the use of soliton microcombs in spectral domain OC…
Programmable spatiotemporal shaping for partially coherent structured wave packets
Shandong Normal University（山东师范大学）；University of Shanghai for Science and Technology（上海理工大学）；Tianjin University of Technology（天津工业大学）；Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；Westlake University（西湖大学）
Coherent AI LLC（Coherent AI有限责任公司）；Huazhong University of Science and Technology（华中科技大学）；Stanford University（斯坦福大学）；University of Wisconsin-Madison（威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校）
Visual object recognition under situations in which the direct line-of-sight is blocked, such as when it is occluded around the corner, is of practical importance in a wide range of applications. With coherent illumination, the light scattered from diffusive walls forms speckle patterns that contain information of the hidden object. It is possible to realize non-line-of-sight (NLOS) recognition with these speckle patterns. We introduce a novel approach based on speckle pattern recognition with deep neural network, which is simpler and more robust than other NLOS recognition methods. Simulation…
Lateral shearing optical diffraction tomography of brain organoid with reduced spatial coherence
UiT The Arctic University of Norway（挪威北极大学）；Warsaw University of Technology, Institute of Micromechanics and Photonics（华沙理工大学微机械与光子学研究所）；Karolinska Institutet（卡罗林斯卡学院）
Diffraction tomography using coherent holographic imaging has been proposed by Emil Wolf in 1969 to extract 3D information from transparent, inhomogeneous objects. At the same time, the Wolf equations describe the propagation correlations associated with partially coherent fields. Combining these two concepts, here we present Wolf phase tomography (WPT), which is a method for performing diffraction tomography using partially coherent fields. The WPT reconstruction works in the direct space-time domain, without the need of Fourier transformation, and decouples the refractive index distribution …
The health of cells found in the inner retinal layers of the human eye is crucial to understand the onset of diseases of the retina such as macular degeneration and retinopathy. A challenge is to periodically image these cells in human eyes to detect abnormalities well before physiological and pathological changes occur. However, in vivo imaging of many of these cells is still elusive despite the phenomenal advances in Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and Adaptive Optics systems. It stems from the fact that cell contrast in reflection is extremely low. Here, we report a major advance towards…
Random lasers with low spatial coherence have important potential applications in high quality imaging and displaying. Here, a random laser with tunable angular spectra is proposed and fabricated through directly coupling an asymmetric microcavity with a commercial optical fiber. The designed random laser demonstrates pumping direction-independence property in working threshold, and good storage stability.More importantly, the angular spectrum can be adjusted by pumping different microcavities on the fiber, the output random lasing with ring-shape in momentum space are used as illumination sou…
The evaluation and monitoring of cells health in the human retina is crucial and follow time course of retinal diseases, detect lesions before irreversible visual loss and to evaluate treatment effects. Towards this goal, a major challenge is to image and quantify retinal cells in human eyes in a non-invasive manner. Despite the phenomenal advances in Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and Adaptive Optics systems, in vivo imaging of many of these cells is limited by the fact that cell contrast in reflection is extremely low. Here, we report on a major advance by proposing and demonstrating a r…
Wide field-of-view imaging of fast processes in a microscope requires high light intensities motivating the use of lasers as light sources. However, due to their long spatial coherence length lasers are inappropriate for such applications as they produce coherent noise and parasitic reflections, such as speckle, degrading image quality. Therefore, we provide a step-by-step guide for constructing a speckle-free and high contrast laser illumination setup using a rotating ground glass diffuser driven by a stepper motor. The setup is easy to build, cheap and allows a significant light throughput o…
