Optical endoscopy is indispensable for minimally-invasive medical diagnostics and therapeutics, whereby visualization of subtle changes in the structure of tissue can be used to identify disease. Adaptive real-time zoom functionality is highly desirable for resolving mucosal microvasculature, which when visualized can be used to improve diagnostic accuracy. Realizing this functionality in state-of-the-art miniaturized endoscopic imaging, such as chip-on-tip endoscopes, is challenging: conventional zoom objectives are bulky and existing chip-on-tip systems still have far from diffraction-limited performance. Point-scanning illumination approaches have been shown to improve imaging resolution by reducing the focused spot size. Typically, this higher resolution comes at the cost of low optical throughput (efficiency) and long acquisition times due to mechanical scanning requirements, thereby limiting applicability in clinical settings. In this work, we demonstrate an innovative Diffractive Optical Element (DOE) based optical imaging system for spatial resolution enhancement without mechanical scanning. Our imaging system is based on simultaneous utilization of a custom DOE and high-speed Digital Micromirror Device (DMD). The multi-level phase-only DOE produces a single super-resolution spot in the far-field while the DMD laterally scans the spot in the object plane at kHz rates. To demonstrate resolution enhancement with high-speed acquisition, we image a resolution test target and fluorescently labelled cells. In the future, through envisioned DOE-array integration in an endoscopic module, resolution enhancement (in an adaptive zoom-mode) can be achieved through illumination modulation alone without the need for separate systems.
When plane wave is used to illuminate Diffractive optical elements (DOEs), the maximum size of the diffraction pattern is limited by the wavelength of the incident beam, the distance from the DOE to the output plane and the sampling interval of the DOE. In this paper, a method is proposed to magnify the maximum size of the diffraction pattern with an introduced intermediate plane and two-step diffraction calculation. Zero padding is used on the DOE plane, the sampling interval on the intermediate plane is correspondingly decreased, and the size of the diffraction pattern is magnified. The accompanied image aliasing is eliminated by placing a low-pass filter on the intermediate plane. The light field distribution on the output plane conforms two-dimensional sinc function as a consequence of the discretization of phases of DOEs. In order to get a uniform diffraction pattern, it is necessary to preprocess the target diffraction pattern. Both numerical simulations and experimental results show the validity of the proposed method.
The controllable axial long depth of focus (DOF) is required in many optical applications, and the axial DOF of a light beam can be controlled by diffractive optical elements (DOEs). However, the trade-off between the sidelobe and controllable DOF often be ignored, which is difficult to implement their desired effect in many applications. In this paper, a modified Gerchberg—Saxton (GS) algorithm is presented for generating DOEs to realize suppressed sidelobe and controllable axial DOF in an acceptance variation of normalized intensity and sidelobe. In the simulation, we optimized the DOEs to control the length of DOF, suppress sidelobe and calculate spot size, and the corresponding length of DOF is within the range of 60λ to 600λ with a different portion (1-7) multi-pure phase DOEs at the numerical aperture is 0.035. Experimental results are also shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. We anticipate that this optical system can be used in laser fabrications, including optical manufacture, highly dynamic cutting and high-quality cutting.
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