CAREER: Optical Intensity Diffraction Tomography with Multiple Scattering

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Tomography is a powerful technique that has found wide applications in life science and medical diagnosis. Optical tomography is particularly attractive since it is noninvasive and uses non-ionizing radiation. Recent development to optical tomography focuses on pushing the imaging depth, as motivated by many important needs including deep tissue imaging and brain photostimulations. However, existing optical tomography devices can only provide high-resolution imaging up to ~100 microns, limited by the single-scattering approximation. The goal of this CAREER program is to overcome this limitation by advancing both fundamental theory and practical devices. This program will establish novel multiple-scattering based tomography models that allow efficiently utilizing the information contained in the multiply scattered light. A new type of optical devices based on the intensity diffraction tomography will be developed with simple experimental setups to facilitate easy adoption to existing microscope systems. The outcome of this program can enable scientific and biomedical discoveries by providing means to study biological samples and phenomena that would be otherwise not accessible, in areas such as histology, cytometry, brain mapping, and drug discovery. In addition, the research subject will be translated to a new "Innovation in a Box" hands-on curriculum and disseminated broadly to middle and high-school students through the Boston University Technology Innovation Scholars Program. The education program will focus on raising both interest and knowledge of STEM subjects and providing multidisciplinary training to graduate, undergraduate, and high-school students with diverse background, in particular women, minorities, and historically under-represented groups.Technical:This CAREER program aims to develop novel optical imaging devices that fully utilize multiple scattering to enable high-resolution imaging in highly scattering media. Scattering in complex media is a fundamental subject that continuously attracts theoretical and experimental endeavors, since it impacts many important applications. To date, solving the inverse-scattering problem remains difficult due to the many degrees of freedom in multiple scattering, and incomplete information limited by the measurement condition. To overcome these limitations, this program will focus on (a) novel physical models and inverse multiple scattering algorithms in both transmission and reflection using intensity-only tomographic measurement; and (b) innovative spatial coherence and multispectral illumination engineering solutions. The anticipated outcomes include: i) new multiple scattering-based theory, algorithms, and devices that can lead to high-resolution 3D imaging of highly scattering objects; ii) theoretical and experimental advancement to 3D phase retrieval in both transmission and reflection tomography; iii) new device design principles for adaptive coherence engineering to harness the multiple scattering information. Broadly, the program will establish fundamentally new understandings of label-free, scatter-based imaging and develop new generation of computational imaging sensors and devices by jointly designing optics and algorithms to break the conventional limits.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.