Time-of-flight 3D imaging through multimode optical fibers.

Stellinga, Daan; Phillips, David B; Mekhail, Simon Peter; Selyem, Adam; Turtaev, Sergey; Čižmár, Tomáš; Padgett, Miles J · Science · 2021

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Time-of-flight three-dimensional (3D) imaging has applications that range from industrial inspection to motion tracking. Depth is recovered by measuring the round-trip flight time of laser pulses, typically using collection optics of several centimeters in diameter. We demonstrate near–video-rate 3D imaging through multimode fibers with a total aperture of several hundred micrometers. We implement aberration correction using wavefront shaping synchronized with a pulsed source and scan the scene at ~23,000 points per second. We image moving objects several meters beyond the end of an ~40-centimeters-long fiber of 50-micrometer core diameter at frame rates of ~5 hertz. Our work grants far-field depth-resolving capabilities to ultrathin microendoscopes, which we expect to have applications to clinical and remote inspection scenarios.