Abstract

Recently various time-gating techniques have been applied to imaging through random scattering media, in particular animal tissues. Because scattered photons travel longer paths, by time-gating one can reject scattered photons, thereby reducing interferences from scattering. An interesting question about time-gated imaging through random scattering media is the limit of spatial resolution. Because the gating width cannot be infinitesimally small, it is not clear how parameters such as the gating width and the medium thickness determine the resolution or, furthermore, in what way the image degrades as the object size becomes smaller than the resolution limit. To answer these questions, we analyze spatial distributions of time-gated photons, which have traveled through random scattering media, by a method at random-phase path integration and from the distributions we derive the resolution limit.

© 1996 Optical Society of America