Imaging with Local Speckle Intensity Correlations: Theory and Practice

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Recent advances in computational imaging have significantly expanded our ability to image through scattering layers such as biological tissues, by exploiting the auto-correlation properties of captured speckle intensity patterns. However, most experimental demonstrations of this capability focus on the far-field imaging setting, where obscured light sources are very far from the scattering layer. By contrast, medical imaging applications such as fluorescent imaging operate in the near-field imaging setting, where sources are inside the scattering layer. We provide a theoretical and experimental study of the similarities and differences between the two settings, highlighting the increased challenges posed by the near-field setting. We then draw insights from this analysis to develop a new algorithm for imaging through scattering that is tailored to the near-field setting, by taking advantage of unique properties of speckle patterns formed under this setting, such as their local support. We present a theoretical analysis of the advantages of our algorithm, and perform real experiments in both far-field and near-field configurations, showing an order-of magnitude expansion in both the range and the density of the obscured patterns that can be recovered.