Holography of Tissues

Abstract

Living biological tissue is an unlikely candidate as a target for holographic imaging. It is strongly aberating, strongly scattering, strongly heterogeneous, nonstationary, anisotropic, and volumetric in extent. Coherent light propagating through it becomes spatially diverse (many scattered wave vectors) and temporally diverse (many scattered frequencies and phases). Holographic imaging, which requires a steady relative phase condition between a signal and a reference wave, is difficult under these conditions. Nonetheless, holographic techniques are increasingly being applied to probe the physical and chemical properties of living tissue.