Photorefractive materials are dynamic holographic storage media that are highly sensitive to coherent light fields and relatively insensitive to a uniform light background. This can be exploited to effectively separate ballistic light from multiply-scattered light when imaging through turbid media. We developed a highly sensitive photorefractive polymer composite and incorporated it into a holographic optical coherence imaging system. This approach combines the advantages of coherence-domain imaging with the benefits of holography to form a high-speed wide-field imaging technique. By using coherence-gated holography, image-bearing ballistic light can be captured in real-time without computed tomography. We analyzed the implications of Fourier-domain and image-domain holography on the field of view and image resolution for a transmission recording geometry, and demonstrate holographic depth-resolved imaging of tumor spheroids with 12 microm axial and 10 microm lateral resolution, achieving a data acquisition speed of 8 x 10(5) voxels/s.

Organic photorefractive composites with sub‐second response time and complete internal diffraction efficiency at low‐intensity 1064 nm illumination are presented. Direct sensitization of the composites is provided by the C84 fullerene derivative [84]PCBM or the organic/inorganic hybrid Ni‐dithiolene complex TT‐2324. Holographic measurements on blends with varying contents of sensitizer are demonstrated.

We present coherence-gated holographic imaging using a highly sensitive photorefractive (PR) polymer composite as the recording medium. Due to the high sensitivity of the composite holographic recording at intensities as low as 5 mW/cm2 allowed for a frame exposure time of only 500ms. Motivated by regenerative medical applications, we demonstrate optical depth sectioning of a polymer foam for use as a cell culture matrix. An axial resolution of 18 μm and a transverse resolution of 30 μm up to a depth of 600 μm was obtained using an off-axis recording geometry.

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