Seeing through biological tissues using the fly eye principle

During the past decade, optical imaging through scattering medium has proved to be a powerful technique for many applications. It is especially effective in medical diagnostic, since it is safe, noninvasive and low-cost compared with the conventional radiation techniques. Based on a similar principle of the fly's visual system, we show a novel method of optical imaging through scattering medium. An image of bones hidden between two biological tissues (chicken breast) is recovered from many noisy speckle pictures obtained on the output of a multi-channeled optical imaging system. The operation of multiple imaging is achieved using a microlens array. Each lens from the array projects a different speckled image on a digital camera. The set of speckled images from the entire array are first shifted to a common center and then accumulated to a single average picture in which the concealed object is exposed. (C) 2003 Optical Society of America.