3D printing has revolutionized the manufacturing of volumetric components and structures in many areas. Several fully volumetric light‐based techniques have been recently developed thanks to the advent of photocurable resins, promising to reach unprecedented short print time (down to a few tens of seconds) while keeping a good resolution (around 100 μm). However, these new approaches only work with homogeneous and relatively transparent resins so that the light patterns used for photo‐polymerization are not scrambled along their propagation. Herein, a method that takes into account light scattering in the resin prior to computing projection patterns is proposed. Using a tomographic volumetric printer, it is experimentally demonstrated that implementation of this correction is critical when printing objects whose size exceeds the scattering mean free path. To show the broad applicability of the technique, functional objects of high print fidelity are fabricated in hard organic scattering acrylates and soft cell‐laden hydrogels (at 4 million cells mL −1 ). This opens up promising perspectives in printing inside turbid materials with particular interesting applications for bioprinting cell‐laden constructs.
In biological microscopy, light scattering represents the main limitation to image at depth. Recently, a set of wavefront shaping techniques has been developed in order to manipulate coherent light in strongly disordered materials. The Transmission Matrix approach has shown its capability to inverse the effect of scattering and efficiently focus light. In practice, the matrix is usually measured using an invasive detector or low-resolution acoustic guide stars. Here, we introduce a non-invasive and all-optical strategy based on linear fluorescence to reconstruct the transmission matrices, to and from a fluorescent object placed inside a scattering medium. It consists in demixing the incoherent patterns emitted by the object using low-rank factorizations and phase retrieval algorithms. We experimentally demonstrate the efficiency of this method through robust and selective focusing. Additionally, from the same measurements, it is possible to exploit memory effect correlations to image and reconstruct extended objects. This approach opens up a new route towards imaging in scattering media with linear or non-linear contrast mechanisms.
Optical imaging deep inside scattering media remains a fundamental problem in bio-imaging. While wavefront shaping has been shown to allow focusing of coherent light at depth, achieving it noninvasively remains a challenge. Various feedback mechanisms, in particular acoustic or non-linear fluorescence-based, have been put forward for this purpose. Non-invasive focusing at depth on fluorescent objects with linear excitation is, however, still unresolved. Here we report a simple method for focusing inside a scattering medium in an epi-detection geometry with a linear signal: optimizing the spatial variance of low contrast speckle patterns emitted by a set of fluorescent sources. Experimentally, we demonstrate robust and efficient focusing of scattered light on a single source, and show that this variance optimization method is formally equivalent to previous optimization strategies based on two-photon fluorescence. Our technique should generalize to a large variety of incoherent contrast mechanisms and holds interesting prospects for deep bio-imaging.
We report a method to design at will the spatial profile of transmitted coherent light after propagation through a scattering sample. We compute an operator based on the experimentally measured transmission matrix, obtained by numerically adding an arbitrary mask in the Fourier domain prior to focusing. We demonstrate the strength of the technique through several examples: propagating Bessel beams, thus generating foci smaller than the diffraction limited speckle grain, donut beams, and helical beams. We characterize the 3D profile of the achieved foci and analyze the fundamental limitations of the technique. Our approach generalizes Fourier optics concepts for random media, and opens in particular interesting perspectives for super-resolution imaging through turbid media.
Non-invasive optical imaging techniques are essential diagnostic tools in many fields. Although various recent methods have been proposed to utilize and control light in multiple scattering media, non-invasive optical imaging through and inside scattering layers across a large field of view remains elusive due to the physical limits set by the optical memory effect, especially without wavefront shaping techniques. Here, we demonstrate an approach that enables non-invasive fluorescence imaging behind scattering layers with field-of-views extending well beyond the optical memory effect. The method consists in demixing the speckle patterns emitted by a fluorescent object under variable unknown random illumination, using matrix factorization and a novel fingerprint-based reconstruction. Experimental validation shows the efficiency and robustness of the method with various fluorescent samples, covering a field of view up to three times the optical memory effect range. Our non-invasive imaging technique is simple, neither requires a spatial light modulator nor a guide star, and can be generalized to a wide range of incoherent contrast mechanisms and illumination schemes.
Over the past decades, ceramics have attracted much interest for their superior properties, including hardness, durability, and stability in extreme environments. They meet fabrication needs in various fields ranging from transportation industry (e.g., diesel engines) to the energy sector (e.g., nuclear) but also environment, defense, aerospace, and in the medical sector (e.g., ceramic thermal barrier coatings, filters, lightweight space mirrors, hip or knee implants). [1][2][3][4][5][6] However, the fabrication of complex ceramic parts remains very challenging. Mainly because of their hardness and brittleness, conventional manufacturing processes, such as machining or molding, are limited to simple object geometries as well as being costly and time-consuming. Additive manufacturing (AM) represents an attractive alternative. Not only does it offer more flexibility in terms of architecture and significantly reduce material waste but also it leads to cost-effective production in a shorter time. In the liquid-based AM technologies being used for the fabrication of ceramics, the process starts with a liquid preceramic polymer (PCP) that is first solidified into a 3D object: the so-called green body. The latter is then transformed into a ceramic material, generally denoted as polymer-derived ceramic (PDC), through a pyrolysis step. [7] Initially, PCP resins were processed or shaped using conventional polymer-forming techniques such as injection molding or extrusion. Later, it was demonstrated that by adding a photoinitiator to the liquid precursor, the solid green body can be formed by exposure to UV radiation. [8] Through photopolymerization, laser-based stereolithography (SLA) has enabled the fabrication of PCP components with high resolution and a good surface quality. [9] It consists of scanning a laser beam on the photosensitive PCP resin and selectively hardening the material, building the 3D green body
The surgical treatments of injured soft tissues lead to further injury due to the use of sutures or the surgical routes, which need to be large enough to insert biomaterials for repair. In contrast, the use of low viscosity photopolymerizable hydrogels that can be inserted with thin needles represents a less traumatic treatment and would therefore reduce the severity of iatrogenic injury. However, the delivery of light to solidify the inserted hydrogel precursor requires a direct access to it, which is mostly invasive. To circumvent this limitation, we investigate the approach of curing the hydrogel located behind biological tissues by sending near-infrared (NIR) light through the latter, as this spectral region has the largest transmittance in biological tissues. Upconverting nanoparticles (UCNPs) are incorporated in the hydrogel precursor to convert NIR transmitted through the tissues into blue light to trigger the photopolymerization. We investigated the photopolymerization process of an adhesive hydrogel placed behind a soft tissue. Bulk polymerization was achieved with local radiation of the adhesive hydrogel through a focused light system. Thus, unlike the common methods for uniform illumination, adhesion formation was achieved with local micrometer-sized radiation of the bulky hydrogel through a gradient photopolymerization phenomenon. Nanoindentation and upright microscope analysis confirmed that the proposed approach for indirect curing of hydrogels below the tissue is a gradient photopolymerization phenomenon. Moreover, we found that the hydrogel mechanical and adhesive properties can be modulated by playing with different parameters of the system such as the NIR light power and the UCNP concentration. The proposed photopolymerization of adhesive hydrogels below the tissue opens the prospect of a minimally invasive surgical treatment of injured soft tissues.
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