Ultrafast Green-Light Swept-Source Imaging Through Advanced Fiber-Optic Technologies

A green-light time-stretch confocal microscopy is demonstrated on a fiber-based platform. On the basis of large dispersion provided by a newly designed dispersive fiber for 1-μm wavelength, this platform enables high-resolution time-stretch imaging merely at a sampling rate of 1 GS/s, which is almost 80 times slower than similar systems demonstrated previously. Both forward- and epi-detection time-stretch imaging at 6 MHz are realized in the same imaging system at a micron-level resolution. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that MHz microscopy at 1 GS/s has been demonstrated in green color that exhibits a μm-resolution. It is believed that this low data-stream time-stretch system can enable ultrafast in-situ imaging in a biofavorable window through practical and affordable hardware configurations.