iffuse light suppression f back - directional ating imaging in high nisotropic media

bstract. We experimentally demonstrate that backirectional gating in an imaging setup can potentially reove unwanted diffuse light to improve the contrast of an bject embedded in a high anisotropic surrounding meium. In such back-directional gating, the high anisotropic roperty of the surrounding medium can serve as a waveuide to deliver the incident light to the embedded object nd to isolate the ballistic or snake-like light backscattered rom the object in a moderate depth. We further discuss he effects of back-directional gating in the image formaion in terms of the image resolution and the depth of eld. Although backscattering detections of biological tisue have recently received considerable attention, we, for he first time to our knowledge, show its potential advanage for the contrast improvement in high anisotropic edia. © 2009 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. DOI: 10.1117/1.3156801