Contrast enhanced spectroscopic optical coherence tomography

A method of forming an image of a sample includes performing SOCT on a sample. The sample may include a contrast agent, which may include an absorbing agent and/or a scattering agent. A method of forming an image of tissue may include selecting a contrast agent, delivering the contrast agent to the tissue, acquiring SOCT data from the tissue, and converting the SOCT data into an image. The contributions to the SOCT data of an absorbing agent and a scattering agent in a sample may be quantified separately

Distinguishing non-resonant four-wave-mixing noise in coherent stokes and anti-stokes Raman scattering

A method of examining a sample comprises exposing the sample to a pump pulse of electromagnetic radiation for a first period of time, exposing the sample to a stimulant pulse of electromagnetic radiation for a second period of time which overlaps in time with at least a portion of the first exposing, to produce a signal pulse of electromagnetic radiation for a third period of time, and interfering the signal pulse with a reference pulse of electromagnetic radiation, to determine which portions of the signal pulse were produced during the exposing of the sample to the stimulant pulse. The first and third periods of time are each greater than the second period of time

Nonlinear interferometric vibrational imaging

A method of examining a sample, which includes: exposing a reference to a first set of electromagnetic radiation, to form a second set of electromagnetic radiation scattered from the reference; exposing a sample to a third set of electromagnetic radiation to form a fourth set of electromagnetic radiation scattered from the sample; and interfering the second set of electromagnetic radiation and the fourth set of electromagnetic radiation. The first set and the third set of electromagnetic radiation are generated from a source; at least a portion of the second set of electromagnetic radiation is of a frequency different from that of the first set of electromagnetic radiation; and at least a portion of the fourth set of electromagnetic radiation is of a frequency different from that of the third set of electromagnetic radiation

Interferometric differentiation between resonant Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering and nonresonant four-wave-mixing processes

A major impediment of using Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering to identify biological molecules is that the illumination levels required to produce a measurable signal often also produce significant nonresonant background from the medium, especially from water, that is not specific to the resonance being investigated. We present a method of using nonlinear interferometry to measure the temporal shape of the anti-Stokes signal to differentiate which components are resonant and nonresonant. This method is easily adaptable to most existing pulsed CARS illumination methods and should allow for distinguishing resonant CARS when using higher energy pulses. By examining the differences between signals produced by acetone and water, we show that the resonant and nonresonant signals can be clearly differentiated.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Compression of fiber supercontinuum pulses to the Fourier-limit in a high-numerical-aperture focus

A multiphoton intrapulse interference phase scan (MIIPS) adaptively and automatically compensates the combined phase distortion from a fiber supercontinuum source, a spatial light modulator pulse shaper, and a high-NA microscope objective, allowing Fourier-transform-limited compression of the supercontinuum pulses at the focus of the objective. A second-harmonic-generation-based method is employed to independently validate the transform-limited compression. The compressed pulses at the focus of the objective have a tunable duration of 10.8–38.9 fs (FWHM), a central wavelength of ~1020 nm, an average power of 18–70 mW, and a repetition rate of 76 MHz, permitting the application of this source to nonlinear optical microscopy and coherently controlled microspectroscopy

Resonant acoustic spectroscopy of soft tissues using embedded magnetomotive nanotransducers and optical coherence tomography

We present a new method for performing dynamic elastography of soft tissue samples. By sensing nanoscale displacements with optical coherence tomography, a chirped, modulated force is applied to acquire the mechanical spectrum of a tissue sample within a few seconds. This modulated force is applied via magnetic nanoparticles, named ‘nanotransducers’, which are diffused into the tissue, and which contribute negligible inertia to the soft tissue mechanical system. Using this novel system, we observed that excised tissues exhibit mechanical resonance modes which are well described by a linear damped harmonic oscillator. Results are validated by using cylindrical tissue phantoms of agarose in which resonant frequencies (30–400 Hz) are consistent with longitudinal modes and the sample boundary conditions. We furthermore show that the Young’s modulus can be computed from their measured resonance frequencies, analogous to resonant ultrasound spectroscopy for stiff material analysis. Using this new technique, named magnetomotive resonant acoustic spectroscopy (MRAS), we monitored the relative stiffening of an excised rat liver during a chemical fixation process

Progress in Cherenkov femtosecond fiber lasers

We review the recent developments in the field of ultrafast Cherenkov fiber lasers. Two essential properties of such laser systems – broad wavelength tunability and high efficiency of Cherenkov radiation wavelength conversion are discussed. The exceptional performance of the Cherenkov fiber laser systems are highlighted - dependent on the realization scheme, the Cherenkov lasers can generate the femtosecond output tunable across the entire visible and even the UV range, and for certain designs more than 40 % conversion efficiency from the pump to Cherenkov signal can be achieved. The femtosecond Cherenkov laser with all-fiber architecture is presented and discussed. Operating in the visible range, it delivers 100–200 fs wavelength-tunable pulses with multimilliwatt output power and exceptionally low noise figure an order of magnitude lower than the traditional wavelength tunable supercontinuum-based femtosecond sources. The applications for Cherenkov laser systems in practical biophotonics and biomedical applications, such as bio-imaging and microscopy, are discussed

MULTI-DIMENSIONAL DENOISING OF REAL-TIME OCT IMAGING DATA

ABSTRACT We present a novel scheme for blind suppression of noise from a sequence of optical coherence tomography (OCT) images, such as those collected on a real-time OCT imaging system. In contrast to virtually all existing approaches to OCT denoising, our technique is specifically aimed at collections of images and is able to exploit the correlations among those images. The proposed method approximates the optimal linear denoising operator for log-transformed data using a 2-D discrete wavelet transform (DWT) to decorrelate in space and the discrete Fourier transform (DFT), or an estimated transform, to decorrelate in time. Decorrelated coefficients are then denoised and converted back to the image domain to produce denoised OCT images. Real-time OCT data processed with this technique shows significant reduction in noise

Low-Noise Operation of All-Fiber Femtosecond Cherenkov Laser

We investigate the noise properties of a femtosecond all-fiber Cherenkov radiation source with emission wavelength 600 nm, based on an Yb-fiber laser and a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber. A relative intensity noise as low as 103 dBc/Hz, corresponding to 2.48% pulse-to-pulse fluctuation in energy, is observed at the Cherenkov radiation output power of 4.3 mW, or 150 pJ-pulse energy. This pulse-to-pulse fluctuation is at least 10.6-dB lower compared to spectrally sliced supercontinuum sources traditionally used for ultrafast fiber-based generation at visible wavelengths. Low noise makes all-fiber Cherenkov sources promising for biophotonics applications such as multiphoton microscopy, where minimum pulse-to-pulse energy fluctuation is required. We present the dependency of the noise figure on both the Cherenkov radiation output power and its spectrum