Wavefront correction enables vibrational imaging of bacteria with multimode fibre probes

Raman spectroscopy is a valuable tool for non-invasive and label-free identification of sample chemical composition. Recently a few miniaturized optical probes emerged driven by the need to address areas of difficult access, such as in endoscopy. However, imaging modality is still out of reach for most of them. Separately, recent advances in wavefront shaping enabled different microscopies to be applied in various complex media including multimode fibers. Here we present the first and thinnest to date Raman fiber imaging probe based on wavefront shaping through a single multimode fiber without use of any additional optics. We image agglomerates of bacteria and pharmaceuticals to demonstrate the capability of our method. This work paves the way towards compact and flexible Raman endoscopy. © (2017) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.Publisher PD