Alternative interpretation of speckle autocorrelation imaging through scattering media

Abstract

High-resolution optical imaging through or within thick scattering media is a long sought after yet unreached goal. In the past decade, the thriving technique developments in wavefront measurement and manipulation do not significantly push the boundary forward. The optical diffusion limit is still a ceiling. In this work, we propose that a scattering medium can be conceptualized as an assembly of randomly packed pinhole cameras and the corresponding speckle pattern as a superposition of randomly shifted pinhole images. The concept is demonstrated through both simulation and experiments, confirming the new perspective to interpret the mechanism of information transmission through scattering media under incoherent illumination. We also analyze the efficiency of single-pinhole and dual-pinhole channels. While in infancy, the proposed method reveals a new perspective to understand imaging and information transmission through scattering media.