Open AccessCharacterizing the beam steering and distortion of Gaussian and Bessel beams focused in tissues with microscopic heterogeneities
Author(s) -
Ye Chen,
Jonathan Liu
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
biomedical optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.362
H-Index - 86
ISSN - 2156-7085
DOI - 10.1364/boe.6.001318
Subject(s) - bessel beam , optics , bessel function , microscopy , beam (structure) , depth of field , distortion (music) , gaussian , laser beam quality , gaussian beam , materials science , numerical aperture , light sheet fluorescence microscopy , microscope , physics , laser beams , scanning confocal electron microscopy , laser , optoelectronics , wavelength , amplifier , cmos , quantum mechanics
Bessel beams have recently been investigated as a means of improving deep-tissue microscopy in highly scattering and heterogeneous media. It has been suggested that the long depth-of-field and self-reconstructing property of a Bessel beam enables an increased penetration depth of the focused beam in tissues compared to a conventional Gaussian beam. However, a study is needed to better quantify the magnitude of the beam steering as well as the distortion of focused Gaussian and Bessel beams in tissues with microscopic heterogeneities. Here, we have developed an imaging method and quantitative metrics to evaluate the motion and distortion of low-numerical-aperture (NA) Gaussian and Bessel beams focused in water, heterogeneous phantoms, and fresh mouse esophagus tissues. Our results indicate that low-NA Bessel beams exhibit reduced beam-steering artifacts and distortions compared to Gaussian beams, and are therefore potentially useful for microscopy applications in which pointing accuracy and beam quality are critical, such as dual-axis confocal (DAC) microscopy.