Wavefront shaping through flexible multicore fiber bundles
The goal of this research proposal is to explore the capabilities of wavefront shaping through flexible, minimally-invasive, multicore fiber bundles to enable light focusing and optical imaging deep inside scattering tissues. The proposed work will address a key challenge limiting the broader adoption of wavefront shaping in neurophotonics, providing an effective way to interface wavefront shaping techniques with the brain.
Understanding the function and structure of regions deep below the surface of tissue is an important goal in biomedicine, especially in neuroscience research. Recently, light has emerged as a powerful tool for probing the brain with modalities such as calcium imaging and optogenetics, methods which are able to probe the wide range of significant spatial and temporal scales spanned by brain activity. However, the use of light in the brain is significantly hampered by the strongly scattering nature of brain tissue in the visible and near-infrared wavelength regimes. This project proposes a way to solve this problem using a multicore fiber-based wavefront shaping system that uses low-coherence interferometry to measure and correct for the phase distortions introduced by the flexible bending of the fiber and deliver shaped wavefronts through it.
As a member of the HMC Biophotonics Lab you will join a passionate group of budding researchers exploring the field of biophotonics and connecting your existing knowledge to generate new ideas. This project will help to create low-cost, compact, and reconfigurable optical microscopes which can be used for a variety of applications including laboratory imaging for diagnostics and for education.