title: Ultrafast time-stretch imaging at 932 nm through a new highly-dispersive fiber.
abstract: Optical glass fiber has played a key role in the development of modern optical communication and attracted the biotechnology researcher's great attention because of its properties, such as the wide bandwidth, low attenuation and superior flexibility. For ultrafast optical imaging, particularly, it has been utilized to perform MHz time-stretch imaging with diffraction-limited resolutions, which is also known as serial time-encoded amplified microscopy (STEAM). Unfortunately, time-stretch imaging with dispersive fibers has so far mostly been demonstrated at the optical communication window of 1.5 μm due to lack of efficient dispersive optical fibers operating at the shorter wavelengths, particularly at the bio-favorable window, i.e., <1.0 μm. Through fiber-optic engineering, here we demonstrate a 7.6-MHz dual-color time-stretch optical imaging at bio-favorable wavelengths of 932 nm and 466 nm. The sensitivity at such a high speed is experimentally identified in a slow data-streaming manner. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that all-optical time-stretch imaging at ultrahigh speed, high sensitivity and high chirping rate (>1 ns/nm) has been demonstrated at a bio-favorable wavelength window through fiber-optic engineering.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoming
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China.
authors.forename: Cihang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
authors.forename: Samuel
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sy
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, Prince of Wales Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; ho.ko@alumni.ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Ho
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ko
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China.
authors.forename: Kevin K
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Tsia
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China.
authors.forename: Kenneth K Y
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Wong
keywords: (060.2280) Fiber design and fabrication; (060.2350) Fiber optics imaging; (060.3510) Lasers, fiber; (170.7160) Ultrafast technology; (300.6530) Spectroscopy, ultrafast