Shaun Pacheco

Single camera imaging system for color and near-infrared fluorescence image guided surgery.

Near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence imaging systems have been developed for image guided surgery in recent years. However, current systems are typically bulky and work only when surgical light in the operating room (OR) is off. We propose a single camera imaging system that is capable of capturing NIR fluorescence and color images under normal surgical lighting illumination. Using a new RGB-NIR sensor and synchronized NIR excitation illumination, we have demonstrated that the system can acquire both color information and fluorescence signal with high sensitivity under normal surgical lighting illumination. The experimental results show that ICG sample with concentration of 0.13 μM can be detected when the excitation irradiance is 3.92 mW/cm2 at an exposure time of 10 ms.

Reflective Fourier ptychography

Abstract. The Fourier ptychography technique in reflection mode has great potential applications in tissue imaging and optical inspection, but the current configuration either has a limitation on cut-off frequency or is not practical. By placing the imaging aperture stop outside the illumination path, the illumination numerical aperture (NA) can be greater than the imaging NA of the objective lens. Thus, the cut-off frequency achieved in the proposed optical system is greater than twice the objective’s NA divided by the wavelength (2NAobj/λ), which is the diffraction limit for the cut-off frequency in an incoherent epi-illumination configuration. We experimentally demonstrated that the synthesized NA is increased by a factor of 4.5 using the proposed optical concept. The key advantage of the proposed system is that it can achieve high-resolution imaging over a large field of view with a simple objective. It will have a great potential for applications in endoscopy, biomedical imaging, surface metrology, and industrial inspection.

Transfer function analysis in epi-illumination Fourier ptychography

This Letter explores Fourier ptychography (FP) using epi-illumination. The approach effectively modifies the FP transfer function to be coherent-like out to the incoherent limit of twice the numerical aperture over the wavelength 2NA/λ. Images reconstructed using this approach are shown to have higher contrast at finer details compared with images using incoherent illumination, indicating that the FP transfer function is superior in high spatial frequency regions.

Snapshot linear-Stokes imaging spectropolarimeter using division-of-focal-plane polarimetry and integral field spectroscopy

In this paper, the design and experimental demonstration of a snapshot linear-Stokes imaging spectropolarimeter (SLSIS) is presented. The SLSIS, which is based on division-of-focal-plane polarimetry with four parallel linear polarization channels and integral field spectroscopy with numerous slit dispersive paths, has no moving parts and provides video-rate Stokes-vector hyperspectral datacubes. It does not need any scanning in the spectral, spatial or polarization dimension and offers significant advantages of rapid reconstruction without heavy computation during post-processing. The principle and the experimental setup of the SLSIS are described in detail. The image registration, Stokes spectral reconstruction and calibration procedures are included, and the system is validated using measurements of tungsten light and a static scene. The SLSIS’s snapshot ability to resolve polarization spectral signatures is demonstrated using measurements of a dynamic scene.

Generation of a controllable multifocal array from a modulated azimuthally polarized beam

In this Letter, the focal spot areas of an azimuthally polarized beam modulated with a vortex-0-2π-phase plate or a π-phase-step plate are numerically found to be smaller than a radially polarized beam for three pupil functions with uniform, Gaussian, and Bessel-Gauss profiles. Several types of multizone phase plates are theoretically designed and numerically simulated for generating tight multifocal arrays from the azimuthally polarized beams for what we believe is the first time. The positions and polarization states of the multifocal arrays can be controlled simply by varying the pattern of the multizone plates. The produced multifocal array with controllable position and polarization is beneficial to parallel optical recording and parallel optical imaging.

Snapshot, reconfigurable multispectral and multi-polarization telecentric imaging system

A reconfigurable telecentric imaging system that can simultaneously capture multispectral and multi-polarization information in a single snapshot is demonstrated. The proposed design utilizes a telecentric imaging objective and a light pipe for image multiplexing. An array of filters is used to filter each of the multiplexed images at an intermediate image plane. In this paper, we will discuss the system configuration and present the experimental results.

Freeform optics construction with nonuniformly sampled grids in modified double‐pole coordinate system

Abstract. The intensity distributions of some light sources have the rotationally symmetric property. We propose a method to design freeform optics by sampling the source intensity distribution nonuniformly in a modified double‐pole coordinate system to satisfy the circular emission pattern of the light source. We can greatly improve the smoothness of the designed freeform surfaces and maximize the collection efficiency. We demonstrate the design method with two freeform illumination lenses: one for the light from the multimode filter and the other for the light emitting diode with a hemisphere emitting solid angle. We also demonstrate that the nonuniform sampling algorithm has significant advantages for designing freeform reflectors with superlarge collection angle.

High resolution, high speed, long working distance, large field of view confocal fluorescence microscope

Confocal fluorescence microscopy is often used in brain imaging experiments, however conventional confocal microscopes are limited in their field of view, working distance, and speed for high resolution imaging. We report here the development of a novel high resolution, high speed, long working distance, and large field of view confocal fluorescence microscope (H2L2-CFM) with the capability of multi-region and multifocal imaging. To demonstrate the concept, a 0.5 numerical aperture (NA) confocal fluorescence microscope is prototyped with a 3 mm × 3 mm field of view and 12 mm working distance, an array of 9 beams is scanned over the field of view in 9 different regions to speed up the acquisition time by a factor of 9. We test this custom designed confocal fluorescence microscope for future use with brain clarification methods to image large volumes of the brain at subcellular resolution. This multi-region and multi-spot imaging method can be used in other imaging modalities, such as multiphoton microscopes, and the field of view can be extended well beyond 12 mm × 12 mm.

Analysis of grating doublets for achromatic beam-splitting.

Achromatic beam-splitting grating doublets are designed for both continuous phase and binary phase gratings. By analyzing the sensitivity to lateral shifts between the two grating layers, it is shown that continuous-profile grating doublets are extremely difficult to fabricate. Achromatic grating doublets that have profiles with a constant first spatial derivative are significantly more resistant to lateral shifts between grating layers, where one design case showed a 17 times improvement in performance. Therefore, binary phase, multi-level phase, and blazed grating doublets perform significantly better than continuous phase grating doublets in the presence of a lateral shift between two grating layers. By studying the sensitivity to fabrication errors in the height of both grating layers, one grating layer height can be adjusted to maintain excellent performance over a large wavelength range if the other grating layer is fabricated incorrectly. It is shown in one design case that the performance of an achromatic Dammann grating doublet can be improved by a factor of 215 if the heights of the grating layers are chosen to minimize the performance change in the presence of fabrication errors.

Sensitivity analysis and optimization method for the fabrication of one-dimensional beam-splitting phase gratings.

A method to design one-dimensional beam-spitting phase gratings with low sensitivity to fabrication errors is described. The method optimizes the phase function of a grating by minimizing the integrated variance of the energy of each output beam over a range of fabrication errors. Numerical results for three 1x9 beam splitting phase gratings are given. Two optimized gratings with low sensitivity to fabrication errors were compared with a grating designed for optimal efficiency. These three gratings were fabricated using gray-scale photolithography. The standard deviation of the 9 outgoing beam energies in the optimized gratings were 2.3 and 3.4 times lower than the optimal efficiency grating.