Structured illumination enables image transmission through scattering media

Precise control of light propagation through highly scattering media is a much desired goal with major technological implications. Since interaction of light with turbid media results in partial or complete depletion of ballistic photons, it is in principle impossible to transmit images through distances longer than the extinction length. In biomedical optics, scattering is the dominant light extinction process accounting almost exclusively for the limited imaging depth range. In addition, most scattering media of interest are dynamic in the sense that the scatter centers continuously change their positions with time. In our work, we employ single-pixel systems, which can overcome the fundamental limitations imposed by multiple scattering even in the dynamically varying case. A sequence of microstructured light patterns codified onto a programmable spatial light modulator are used to sample an object and measurements are captured with a single-pixel detector. Acquisition time is reduced by using compressive sensing techniques. The patterns are used as generalized measurement modes where the object information is expressed. Contrary to the techniques based on the transmission matrix, our approach does not require any a-priori calibration process. The presence of a scattering medium between the object and the detector scrambles the light and mixes the information from all the regions of the sample. However, the object information that can be retrieved from the generalized modes is not destroyed. Furthermore, by using these techniques we have been able to tackle the general problem of imaging objects completely embedded in a scattering medium.