title: Enhancement of optical coherence microscopy in turbid media by an optical parametric amplifier.
abstract: We report the enhancement in imaging performance of a spectral-domain optical coherence microscope (OCM) in turbid media by incorporating an optical parametric amplifier (OPA). The OPA provides a high level of optical gain to the sample arm, thereby improving the signal-to-noise ratio of the OCM by a factor of up to 15 dB. A unique nonlinear confocal gate is automatically formed in the OPA, which enables selective amplification of singly scattered (ballistic) photons against the multiply-scattered light background. Simultaneous enhancement in both imaging depth and spatial resolution in imaging microstructures in highly light-scattering media are demonstrated with the combined OPA-OCM setup. Typical OCM inteferograms (left) and images (right) without and with OPA.
authors.affiliation: Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 61801, Urbana, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Youbo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 61801, Urbana, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Haohua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tu
authors.affiliation: Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 61801, Urbana, IL, USA.|Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 61801, Urbana, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 61801, Urbana, IL, USA.|Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 61801, Urbana, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Andrew J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Bower
authors.affiliation: Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 61801, Urbana, IL, USA. boppart@illinois.edu.|Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 61801, Urbana, IL, USA. boppart@illinois.edu.|Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 61801, Urbana, IL, USA. boppart@illinois.edu.|Department of Internal Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 61801, Urbana, IL, USA. boppart@illinois.edu.
authors.forename: Stephen A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Boppart
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D008853:Microscopy / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*
keywords: microscopy; optical coherence tomography; optical parametric oscillators and amplifiers; turbid media