Abstract

Imaging through turbid media using optical radiation has been of particular interest this past decade because of the potential applications in medical diagnostics, such as pathology or tumor detection. Consequently, many optical methods have been developed to detect objects embedded in strongly scattering media, including time-gating or coherence-gating imaging to discriminate between the early-arriving ballistic photons and the time- delayed scattered photons. Moreover, the optical wavelength of the radiation that penetrates into the scattering medium is of primary importance to minimize the scattering process Especially, with near infrared light (1000 to 1300 nm), it is possible to penetrate deeper into biological tissues than with visible light In this paper, we demonstrate the efficiency of a femtosecond Cr⁴⁺: forsterite taser source (1220 nm 50 fs, 50 µJ/pulse [1]) for real-time 2D imaging through scattering media using an optical nonlinear time-gating technique

© 2000 IEEE