High-Speed and High-Resolution Photon Counting for Near-Range Lidar

The near-range lidars for hard target and atmosphere detection should follow to the quick motion/activity of the measurement target. The transmitting optical power will be lowered for safety in the human activity space. And the lidar should increase the pulse repetition frequency to get the enough signal-to-noise ratio. The high-speed, high-resolution and high-repetition photon counting is desired for the near-range lidar. It is not a single photon counting at a certain delay time, but a multi-channel scaler with a deep memory for a series of delay times, that is, ranging data acquisition for lidar application. In this chapter, the mini-lidar for near-range observation is discussed. The targets are dust, gas, and atmosphere (aerosols). The activity monitoring of the atmosphere within a few hundred meters is the purpose of this mini-lidar. To follow and visualize the rapid motion of the target, high-speed and high-resolution photon counters (multi-channel scalers) were developed. The observation range can be easily adjustable depending on the lidar setup. The system can visualize the rapid motion of target with the high-resolution of 0.15 m (BIN width of 1 ns) and the minimum summation time of 0.2 s

Hydrogen Gas Detection by Mini-Raman Lidar

Now, Hydrogen gas is of particular interest as new energy source and dangerous material in nuclear facility. Fuel cell is started to use in home power generation system in 2008 and fuel cell vehicle (FCV) is commercialized from 2014 in Japan. On contrary, the Great East Japan Earthquake revealed the fear of hydrogen explosion on Fukushima Nuclear Power plant in 2011. Contact type hydrogen sensors induce changes on the gas flow, and the actual concentration cannot be known. It is hard to get the gas concentration distribution in hydrogen leakage area. We focused on optical remote sensing for the hydrogen detection. Raman scattering detection was accomplished for the hydrogen gas with a compact Diode Pumped Solid State (DPSS) laser-based Raman lidar. The quantitative measurement was conducted on the hydrogen gas concentration of 1 - 100% and the detectable distance of 500 kHz, and the quantitative measurements of hydrogen concentration were conducted on lab-experiment and at outdoor

Proposal of dental demineralization diagnosis with OCT echo based on multiscale entropy analysis

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been widely used for the diagnosis of dental demineralization. Most methods rely on extracting optical features from OCT echoes for evaluation or diagnosis. However, due to the diversity of biological samples and the complexity of tissues, the separability and robustness of extracted optical features are inadequate, resulting in a low diagnostic efficiency. Given the widespread utilization of entropy analysis in examining signals from biological tissues, we introduce a dental demineralization diagnosis method using OCT echoes, employing multiscale entropy analysis. Three multiscale entropy analysis methods were used to extract features from the OCT one-dimensional echo signal of normal and demineralized teeth, and a probabilistic neural network (PNN) was used for dental demineralization diagnosis. By comparing diagnostic efficiency, diagnostic speed, and parameter optimization dependency, the multiscale dispersion entropy-PNN (MDE-PNN) method was found to have comprehensive advantages in dental demineralization diagnosis with a diagnostic efficiency of 0.9397. Compared with optical feature-based dental demineralization diagnosis methods, the entropy features-based analysis had better feature separability and higher diagnostic efficiency, and showed its potential in dental demineralization diagnosis with OCT

Atmosphere Activity Measurement by LED Raman Mini Lidar

The LED mini lidar was improved to monitor Raman scattering echoes. The Raman scattering signal indicates a certain gas concentration and it can distinguish the target from the other materials. It is so weak, 1/1000 of Mie scattering echoes, but even enough to be stimulated from the target gas with LED pulsed beam. At first, we developed a compact Raman lidar with micro pulse DPSS laser to detect hydrogen gas quantitatively. We replaced it with the LED pulse module, which was calculated enough potential to stimulate Raman scattering and detect the target gas. The next task is the activity measurement of such a target gas. To validate the potential of the LED Raman lidar, we conducted the sea surface atmosphere measurement. As a result, the unique relationship between the surface atmosphere and sea water echoes was observed. In this report, we state the concrete specification of the LED mini Raman lidar and some results of the activity observations

Lidar transmitter offers “non-diffracting” property through short distance in highly-dense random media

Non-diffracting beam (NDB) is useful in lidar transmitter because of its high propagation efficiency and high resolution. We aimed to generate NDB in random media such as haze and cloud. The laboratory experiment was conducted with diluted processed milk (fat: 1.8%, 1.1μmφ). Narrow view angle detector of 5.5mrad was used to detect the forward scattering waveform. We obtained the central peak of NDB at the propagation distance of 5cm ~ 30cm in random media by adjusting the concentration of <10%

Lidar transmitter offers “non-diffracting” property through short distance in highly-dense random media

Non-diffracting beam (NDB) is useful in lidar transmitter because of its high propagation efficiency and high resolution. We aimed to generate NDB in random media such as haze and cloud. The laboratory experiment was conducted with diluted processed milk (fat: 1.8%, 1.1μmφ). Narrow view angle detector of 5.5mrad was used to detect the forward scattering waveform. We obtained the central peak of NDB at the propagation distance of 5cm ~ 30cm in random media by adjusting the concentration of <10%