Open AccessFull-field quantitative phase and polarisation-resolved imaging through an optical fibre bundle
Author(s) -
George S. D. Gordon,
James Joseph,
Travis W. Sawyer,
Alexander J. Macfaden,
Calum Williams,
Timothy D. Wilkinson,
Sarah E. Bohndiek
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.27.023929
Subject(s) - optics , birefringence , polarimetry , phase (matter) , amplitude , transmission (telecommunications) , speckle pattern , optical fiber , phase retrieval , materials science , computer science , physics , telecommunications , fourier transform , scattering , quantum mechanics
Flexible optical fibres, used in conventional medical endoscopy and industrial inspection, scramble phase and polarisation information, restricting users to amplitude-only imaging. Here, we exploit the near-diagonality of the multi-core fibre (MCF) transmission matrix in a parallelised fibre characterisation architecture, enabling accurate imaging of quantitative phase (error <0.3 rad) and polarisation-resolved (errors <10%) properties. We first demonstrate accurate recovery of optical amplitude and phase in two polarisations through the MCF by measuring and inverting the transmission matrix, and then present a robust Bayesian inference approach to resolving 5 polarimetric properties of samples. Our method produces high-resolution (9.0±2.6 μ m amplitude, phase; 36.0±10.4 μ m polarimetric) full-field images at working distances up to 1mm over a field-of-view up to 750×750 μ m 2 using an MCF with potential for flexible operation. We demonstrate the potential of using quantitative phase for computational image focusing and polarisation-resolved properties in imaging birefringence.