Mooseok Jang

Recently, wavefront shaping with disordered media has demonstrated optical manipulation capabilities beyond those of conventional optics, including extended volume, aberration-free focusing and subwavelength focusing. However, translating these capabilities to useful applications has remained challenging as the input–output characteristics of the disordered media (P variables) need to be exhaustively determined via O(P) measurements.

A new technique developed at Caltech that uses gas-filled microbubbles for focusing light inside tissue could one day provide doctors with a minimally invasive way of destroying tumors with lasers, and lead to improved diagnostic medical imaging. The primary challenge with focusing light inside the body is that biological tissue is optically opaque. Unlike transparent glass, the cells and proteins that make up tissue scatter and absorb light.