Controlled light field concentration through turbid biological membrane for phototherapy

Laser propagation through a turbid rat dura mater membrane is shown to be controllable with a wavefront modulation technique. The scattered light field can be refocused into a target area behind the rat dura mater membrane with a 110 times intensity enhancement using a spatial light modulator. The efficient laser intensity concentration system is demonstrated to imitate the phototherapy for human brain tumors. The power density in the target area is enhanced more than 200 times compared with the input power density on the dura mater membrane, thus allowing continued irradiation concentration to the deep lesion without damage to the dura mater. Multibeam inputs along different directions, or at different positions, can be guided to focus to the same spot behind the membrane, hence providing a similar gamma knife function in optical spectral range. Moreover, both the polarization and the phase of the input field can be recovered in the target area, allowing coherent field superposition in comparison with the linear intensity superposition for the gamma knife. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America