Abstract
It will be illustrated how biological elements, like live bacteria species and Red Blood Cells (RBCs) can accomplish optical functionalities. Indeed, turbid media made of biological elements allows coherent microscopy despite the strong light scattering these provoke, acting on light just as moving diffusers. Scattering events are highly uncorrelated in time, so that a multi-look strategy can be successfully adopted to achieve quantitative microscopy through turbidity. Experiments aimed at observing test targets and biological specimens through high-density bacteria volumes and turbid blood flows are reported, demonstrating that a turbid medium can have a positive effect on a coherent imaging system, mimicking the action of a coherent noise decorrelation device. It is remarkable that restored holographic reconstructions through turbidity yield an image quality significantly higher, in terms of Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), than the quality achievable through a transparent medium in similar recording conditions. Moreover, suspended RBCs are demonstrated here to behave as tunable liquid micro-lenses, whose focus is controllable changing the buffer features. This capability is demonstrated through dynamic wavefront characterization and direct imaging, opening new scenarios in biophotonics for endoscopic vision and diagnostics.
© 2017 Optical Society of Japan
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