Turbidity suppression from the ballistic to the diffusive regime in biological tissues using optical phase conjugation

We describe the amplitude and resolution trends of the signals acquired by turbidity suppression through optical phase conjugation (TSOPC) with samples that span the ballistic and diffusive scattering regimes. In these experiments, the light field scattered through a turbid material is written into a hologram, and a time-reversed copy of the light field is played back through the sample. In this manner, the wavefront originally incident on the sample is reconstructed. We examine a range of scattering samples including chicken breast tissue sections of increasing thickness and polyacrylamide tissue-mimicking phantoms with increasing scattering coefficients. Our results indicate that only a small portion of the scattered wavefront (<0.02%) must be collected to reconstruct a TSOPC signal. Provided the sample is highly scattering, all essential angular information is contained within such small portions of the scattered wavefront due to randomization by scattering. A model is fitted to our results, describing the dependence of the TSOPC signal on other measurable values within the system and shedding light on the efficiency of the phase conjugation process. Our results describe the highest level of scattering that has been phase conjugated in biological tissues to date. (C) 2010 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. [DOI: 10.1117/1.3381188]