Looking through walls and around corners with incoherent light: Wide-field real-time imaging through scattering media

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a real-time, wide-field imaging technique through scattering media using wavefront-shaping that works with incoherent light and does not require complex setups, advancing practical applications like seeing through walls.

Contribution

The authors introduce a wavefront-shaping method enabling real-time imaging through scattering media with incoherent light, eliminating the need for interferometry or raster scanning.

Findings

Achieved real-time wide-field imaging through scattering media.

Method works with incoherent illumination, not just coherent light.

Does not require interferometric detection or off-line reconstruction.

Abstract

Imaging with optical resolution through highly scattering media is a long sought-after goal with important applications in deep tissue imaging. Although being the focus of numerous works, this goal was considered impractical until recently. Adaptive-optics techniques which are effective in correcting weak wavefront aberrations, were deemed inadequate for turbid samples, where complex speckle patterns arise and light is scattered to a large number of modes that greatly exceeds the number of degrees of control. This conception changed after the demonstration of focusing coherent light through turbid media by wavefront-shaping, using a spatial-light-modulator (SLM). Here we show that wavefront-shaping enables widefield real-time imaging through scattering media with both coherent or incoherent illumination, in transmission and reflection. In contrast to the recently introduced schemes for imaging through turbid media, our technique does not require coherent sources, interferometric detection, raster scanning, or off-line image reconstruction. Our results bring wavefront-shaping closer to practical applications, and realize the vision of looking 'through walls' and 'around corners'.