Adaptive optics articles from across Nature Portfolio

Microscopy exploits light scattering to image biological tissues, but heterogeneities distort wave trajectories, creating a foggy image. A digital approach is proposed to harness these complex paths and reveal the inner structure of opaque media.

Based on the acquisition of a multi-spectral reflection matrix at a high frame rate, a fully digital microscope overcomes aberrations and multiple scattering to provide a three-dimensional image of an ex vivo opaque cornea at a resolution of 0.29 μm and 0.5 μm in the transverse and axial directions, respectively.

Authors employ tensor decomposition techniques to maximise the interaction between light and perturbations in complex media as a strategy for identifying the maximum-information intensity channel, which maximizes the change in the output intensity distribution.

Perception of spectrally distinctive features can be achieved using arrays of back-to-back photodiodes that have a spectral response that can be electrically tuned.

Adaptive optics allows scientists to correct for distortions of an image caused by the scattering of light. Anita Chandran illuminates the nature of the technique.

Allen Weeks, Director General of the Extreme Light Infrastructure European Research Infrastructure Consortium, talks to Nature Photonics about the founding and future of the high-power-laser facilities, and stimulating a resurgence of physics in new EU member countries.

Prof. Martin Booth, as one of the first people to explore the practical use of adaptive optics in microscopy, shares with us his valuable experience and insight