Single snapshot multiple frequency modulated imaging of subsurface optical properties of turbid media with structured light

Abstract

We report a novel demodulation method that enables single snapshot wide field imaging of optical properties of turbid media in the Spatial Frequency Domain (SFD). This Single Snapshot Multiple frequency Demodulation (SSMD) method makes use of the orthogonality of harmonic functions to extract the modulation transfer function (MTF) at multiple modulation frequencies simultaneously from a single structured-illuminated image at once. The orientation, frequency, and amplitude of each modulation can be set arbitrarily subject to the limitation of the implementation device. We first validate and compare SSMD to the existing demodulation methods by numerical simulations. The performance of SSMD is then demonstrated with experiments on both tissue mimicking phantoms and in vivo for recovering optical properties by comparing to the standard three-phase demodulation approach. The results show that SSMD increases significantly the data acquisition speed and reduces motion artefacts. SSMD exhibits excellent noise suppression in imaging as well at the rate proportional to the square root of the number of pixels contained in its kernel. SSMD is ideal in the implementation of a real-time spatial frequency domain imaging platform and will open up SFDI for vast applications in imaging and monitoring dynamic turbid medium and processes.