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Ultrafast optics

Focusing through scattering media

A scattering medium such as biological tissue distorts the propagation of light pulses in both space and time, making tasks such as focusing and imaging problematic. Fortunately, careful manipulation of the light field's spatial phase prior to entering the medium can help mitigate such distortions and open new prospects for nonlinear microscopy.

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Figure 1: Multiple scattering of a coherent input field in an inhomogeneous medium gives rise to a noise-like speckle field.
Figure 2: The temporal speckle at any position within the medium is a random superposition of contributions from different points on the input surface.

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Correspondence to Andrew M. Weiner.

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Weiner, A. Focusing through scattering media. Nature Photon 5, 332–334 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2011.114

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