Ashraf F. El-Sherif

Laser-induced photothermal technique used for detection of caries in human tooth

Thermal monitoring during laser-irradiated hard tissues is fundamental to enable real time feedback control and automated adjustment of laser power to maintain a constant, predetermined tissue temperature. We present an experimental technique to produce thermal wave generated in human tooth by irradiation of a high power Q-switched Nd:YAG laser operating at 1064 nm, with variable pulse energy in the range of 50-250 mJ/pulse providing laser fluences of 0.4-2 J/cm2 for the laser beam with diameter of less than 1 mm, and short pulse duration down to 100 μsec (or 0.1 ms) at FWHM. A comparison of the measured time-dependent thermal wave for normal and carious human tooth using infrared thermal detector is investigated, simultaneously we have measure the photoacoustic response of the sample using piezoelectric transducer. Calculations of the results demonstrate that the faster temperature decay is for caries one with higher thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity than the normal one. So the normal tooth has the largest absorption coefficient causing a purely surface heating effect, but for the carious one, the heat source resulting from the relatively low absorption coefficient does not resemble surface heating, but describes a heating effect extending some distance into the irradiated material. These results are in good agreement with the simultaneous measured photoacoustic response, so we can differentiate between the normal and carious ones.

Femtosecond laser post-processing of metal parts produced by laser additive manufacturing

High-repetition rate femtosecond laser radiation was utilized to improve surface quality of metal parts manufactured by laser additive techniques. Different laser scanning approaches were utilized to increase the ablation efficiency and to improve the surface finish. Processing of 3D-shaped parts made of titanium- and nickel-base alloys resulted in the reduction of the average surface roughness to a few microns. This approach can be used to post-process parts made of thermally and mechanically sensitive materials and to attain complex designed shapes with micrometer precision. Advantages and limitations of this novel post-processing technique are discussed.

Studying the effect of zeolite inclusion in aluminum alloy on measurement of its surface hardness using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy technique

Abstract. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has been used to study the surface hardness of special aluminum alloys containing zeolite. The aluminum alloy has acquired pronounced changes in its metallurgical properties due to the zeolite inclusion. The surface hardness of the samples under investigation is determined by measuring the spectral intensity ratios of the ionic to atomic spectral lines in the LIBS spectra of samples having different surface hardness values that have been conventionally measured before for comparison. The presence of aluminum silicate mineral in the studied alloys enabled material volume to expand under compression. This feature gave new results in the measurement of hardness via LIBS. It has been proven that the trend of the alloy density change complies with the increase of ionic to atomic spectral line intensity ratio.

High-performance near-infrared imaging for breast cancer detection

Abstract. We present a method for the noninvasive determination of the size, position, and optical properties of tumors in the human breast. The tumor is first detected by photothermal imaging. It is then sized, located, and optically characterized using designed digital image processing and edge-detection pattern recognition. The method assumes that the tumor is spherical and inhomogeneous and embedded in an otherwise homogeneous tissue. Heat energy is deposited in the tissue by absorption of near-infrared (NIR) Nd:YAG laser radiation, and its subsequent conversion to heat via vibrational relaxation causes a rise in temperature of the tissue. The tumor absorbs and scatters NIR light more strongly than the surrounding healthy tissue. Heat will diffuse through the tissue, causing a rise in temperature of the surrounding tissue. Differentiation between normal and cancerous tissues is determined using IR thermal imaging. Results are presented on a 55-year-old patient with a papillary breast cancer. We found that these results provide the clinician with more detailed information about breast lesions detected by photothermal imaging and thereby enhance its potential for specificity.

Design and performance analysis of a tunable and self-pulsation diode pumped double-clad D-shaped Yb 3 + -doped silica fiber laser

A wide range of applications have emerged for tunable ytterbium fiber lasers as single-frequency sources for spectroscopic applications, pumping source of Pr:ZBLAN amplifier, and Tm:ZBLAN upconversion laser, material processing, and military applications. In this paper, a 975-nm high power fiber coupled high power diode laser module of up to 5 W end pumping a ytterbium-doped multimode D-shaped fiber laser has been investigated. This used a Fabry-Perot cavity with output coupler reflectivities of 80%, 60%, and Fresnel reflection of 4%. The output laser wavelength was tuned over a wide range of more than 50 nm, from 1041 to 1094 nm for cavity lengths from 1 to 10 m, respectively. An optical-to-optical slope efficiency of 45% was found for a 1-m cavity length, which increased to 60% for a 4-m cavity length. The maximum slope efficiency of 82.1% for a cavity length of 2 m was measured with the Fresnel reflection output coupler, and the measured lowest threshold pump power for this high gain cavity configuration was 130 mW. The threshold lasing pumping powers of 4.3, 4.5, and 4.7 W were dependent on the output coupler reflectivities of 80%, 60%, and Fresnel reflection of 4%, respectively. Also, self-pulsation phenomena were observed only at higher level pumping powers of more than 4 W and at longer cavity length.

Multivariate image analysis of laser-induced photothermal imaging used for detection of caries tooth

Time-resolved photothermal imaging has been investigated to characterize tooth for the purpose of discriminating between normal and caries areas of the hard tissue using thermal camera. Ultrasonic thermoelastic waves were generated in hard tissue by the absorption of fiber-coupled Q-switched Nd:YAG laser pulses operating at 1064 nm in conjunction with a laser-induced photothermal technique used to detect the thermal radiation waves for diagnosis of human tooth. The concepts behind the use of photo-thermal techniques for off-line detection of caries tooth features were presented by our group in earlier work. This paper illustrates the application of multivariate image analysis (MIA) techniques to detect the presence of caries tooth. MIA is used to rapidly detect the presence and quantity of common caries tooth features as they scanned by the high resolution color (RGB) thermal cameras. Multivariate principal component analysis is used to decompose the acquired three-channel tooth images into a two dimensional principal components (PC) space. Masking score point clusters in the score space and highlighting corresponding pixels in the image space of the two dominant PCs enables isolation of caries defect pixels based on contrast and color information. The technique provides a qualitative result that can be used for early stage caries tooth detection. The proposed technique can potentially be used on-line or real-time resolved to prescreen the existence of caries through vision based systems like real-time thermal camera. Experimental results on the large number of extracted teeth as well as one of the thermal image panoramas of the human teeth voltanteer are investigated and presented.

Underwater laser detection system

The conventional method used to detect an underwater target is by sending and receiving some form of acoustic energy. But the acoustic systems have limitations in the range resolution and accuracy; while, the potential benefits of a laserbased underwater target detection include high directionality, high response, and high range accuracy. Lasers operating in the blue-green region of the light spectrum(420 : 570nm)have a several applications in the area of detection and ranging of submersible targets due to minimum attenuation through water ( less than 0.1 m-1) and maximum laser reflection from estimated target (like mines or submarines) to provide a long range of detection. In this paper laser attenuation in water was measured experimentally by new simple method by using high resolution spectrometer. The laser echoes from different targets (metal, plastic, wood, and rubber) were detected using high resolution CCD camera; the position of detection camera was optimized to provide a high reflection laser from target and low backscattering noise from the water medium, digital image processing techniques were applied to detect and discriminate the echoes from the metal target and subtract the echoes from other objects. Extraction the image of target from the scattering noise is done by background subtraction and edge detection techniques. As a conclusion, we present a high response laser imaging system to detect and discriminate small size, like-mine underwater targets.

Effects of the source, surface, and sensor couplings and colorimetric of laser speckle pattern on the performance of optical imaging system

Optical imaging systems are widely used in different applications include tracking for portable scanners; input pointing devices for laptop computers, cell phones, and cameras, fingerprint-identification scanners, optical navigation for target tracking, and in optical computer mouse. We presented an experimental work to measure and analyze the laser speckle pattern (LSP) produced from different optical sources (i.e. various color LEDs, 3 mW diode laser, and 10mW He-Ne laser) with different produced operating surfaces (Gabor hologram diffusers), and how they affects the performance of the optical imaging systems; speckle size and signal-to-noise ratio (signal is represented by the patches of the speckles that contain or carry information, and noise is represented by the whole remaining part of the selected image). The theoretical and experimental studies of the colorimetry (color correction is done in the color images captured by the optical imaging system to produce realistic color images which contains most of the information in the image by selecting suitable gray scale which contains most of the informative data in the image, this is done by calculating the accurate Red-Green-Blue (RGB) color components making use of the measured spectrum for light sources, and color matching functions of International Telecommunication Organization (ITU-R709) for CRT phosphorus, Tirinton-SONY Model ) for the used optical sources are investigated and introduced to present the relations between the signal-to-noise ratios with different diffusers for each light source. The source surface coupling has been discussed and concludes that the performance of the optical imaging system for certain source varies from worst to best based on the operating surface. The sensor /surface coupling has been studied and discussed for the case of He-Ne laser and concludes the speckle size is ranged from 4.59 to 4.62 μm, which are slightly different or approximately the same for all produced diffusers (which satisfies the fact that the speckle size is independent on the illuminating surface). But, the calculated value of signal-tonoise ratio takes different values ranged from 0.71 to 0.92 for different diffuser. This means that the surface texture affects the performance of the optical sensor because, all images captured for all diffusers under the same conditions [same source (He-Ne laser), same distances of the experimental set-up, and the same sensor (CCD camera)].

Design and performance analysis of a tunable and self-pulsation diode pumped double-clad D-shaped Yb3+-doped silica fiber laser

Ytterbium doped silica fibers exhibits very broad absorption and emission band, from ~800 nm to ~1064 nm for absorption and ~970 nm to ~1200 nm for emission according to the cavity length. A wide range of applications for tunable ytterbium fiber laser like development of single-frequency sources for spectroscopic applications, pumping source of Pr: ZBLAN amplifier and Tm: ZBLAN up conversion laser, material processing and military applications. In this paper, a 976 nm high power fiber coupled diode laser of up to 5 W end pumped ytterbium doped multimode D-shaped fiber laser using Fabry-Perot cavity with different regime of operation with the output coupler reflectivities of 80%, 60%, and Fresnel reflection of 4%. The output laser wavelength ranges from 1041 nm to 1094 nm for a cavity length from 1 m to 10 m, respectively. The optical to optical slope efficiency of 45% at 1 m and increased to be 60% at 4 m cavity length were measured. The maximum slope efficiency of 82.12% at cavity length of 2m were investigated with Fresnel reflection output coupler, and the measured lowest threshold pump power for this configuration was 130 mW. Also, the self-pulsation phenomena were observed just at higher pumping power of more than 4W and its threshold pumping power were (4.3W, 4.5W and 4.7W) with output coupler reflectivities of (80%, 60%, and Fresnel reflection of 4%), respectively at 10 m fiber length.

Active modulation of laser coded systems using near infrared video projection system based on digital micromirror device (DMD)

Near infrared (NIR) dynamic scene projection systems are used to perform hardware in-the-loop (HWIL) testing of a unit under test operating in the NIR band. The common and complex requirement of a class of these units is a dynamic scene that is spatio-temporal variant. In this paper we apply and investigate active external modulation of NIR laser in different ranges of temporal frequencies. We use digital micromirror devices (DMDs) integrated as the core of a NIR projection system to generate these dynamic scenes. We deploy the spatial pattern to the DMD controller to simultaneously yield the required amplitude by pulse width modulation (PWM) of the mirror elements as well as the spatio-temporal pattern. Desired modulation and coding of high stable, high power visible (Red laser at 640 nm) and NIR (Diode laser at 976 nm) using the combination of different optical masks based on DMD were achieved. These spatial versatile active coding strategies for both low and high frequencies in the range of kHz for irradiance of different targets were generated by our system and recorded using VIS-NIR fast cameras. The temporally-modulated laser pulse traces were measured using array of fast response photodetectors. Finally using a high resolution spectrometer, we evaluated the NIR dynamic scene projection system response in terms of preserving the wavelength and band spread of the NIR source after projection.