Single-shot correlation system for longitudinal imaging in biological tissues

International audienceWe present a new optical imaging system which records longitudinal slices of a biological sample directly and at video-rate. The system employs the property of time-to-space conversion of a single-shot correlator in order to make ultrafast optical images. Due to the high speed of the acquisition (one frame per single laser pulse), the internal structure of in vivo tissues can be resolved with a depth resolution of 15 μm due to the 40 fs pulse duration of the Ti:sapphire laser source. With this apparatus, we imaged the skin of a human forearm in vivo and a mouse ear ex vivo, and we were able to detect light attenuations of up to 4×10−6