Confocal Imaging Device Spatial Light Modulator Rolling Shutter Synchronization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current confocal imaging systems face limitations in flexibility, precision, and cost-effectiveness, particularly in using spatial light modulators integrated with illumination sources, which are essential for advanced imaging techniques like optical coherence tomography and adaptive optics, due to complex alignments and the need for multiple sensor frames.
Innovation Solution
A confocal imaging device utilizing a spatial light modulator to produce illumination patterns in conjunction with a two-dimensional pixel array sensor featuring a rolling shutter, allowing for real-time control of the spatial-temporal relationship between the rolling shutter and modulation patterns, enabling compact, cost-effective, and robust imaging systems that can perform various imaging modalities such as fluorescence, polarization-sensitive, and spectral-domain OCT.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a single scanner is used to illuminate the target with spatially offset slits or complex patterns, then additional illumination pathways are required, but alignment precision becomes difficult and device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple illumination pathways into a single scanner by using a spatial light modulator (SLM) to generate complex illumination patterns. The SLM modulates a single illumination beam to create multiple virtual sources and patterns, eliminating the need for multiple physical scanners and their associated alignment complexities while maintaining the versatility of multi-pattern illumination.
Solution Approach 2:
The spatial light modulator acts as an intermediary device between the single scanner and the target. It transforms a simple scanned beam into complex illumination patterns (multiple slits, arrays, or custom geometries) by modulating the beam's spatial distribution, thereby achieving the functionality of multiple scanners through a single scanning mechanism.
2Adaptability or versatility
If multiple sensor frames are used to achieve confocal imaging with integrated spatial light modulators, then imaging flexibility improves, but acquisition time increases and productivity decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements continuous confocal imaging by synchronizing the rolling shutter sensor's readout with the temporal modulation of the illumination patterns. This allows the sensor to continuously capture confocal information as the illumination patterns evolve over time, eliminating the need to acquire separate frames for different imaging modalities and enabling real-time multi-modal imaging within a single continuous acquisition sequence.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adjusts illumination patterns and sensor readout timing during a single continuous acquisition. The spatial light modulator dynamically changes illumination geometries (e.g., from confocal to dark-field patterns) while the rolling shutter sensor dynamically adjusts its integration windows to match the temporal characteristics of each pattern, enabling multiple imaging modalities without requiring separate static frames.
3Ease of manufacture
If a rolling shutter sensor is used instead of a global shutter, then device cost decreases and ease of manufacture improves, but motion distortion increases and measurement precision deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary synchronization by pre-coordinating the rolling shutter's row-by-row readout timing with the temporal evolution of illumination patterns. The illumination patterns are designed and timed in advance to match the rolling shutter's scan rate, ensuring that each row of the sensor captures light from the correct spatial position and temporal moment, thereby eliminating motion distortion and maintaining confocal spatial filtering precision.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the temporal parameters of the illumination patterns to match the rolling shutter's readout characteristics. By adjusting the modulation frequency and timing of the illumination patterns to be synchronized with the rolling shutter's row integration time, the system transforms the rolling shutter's inherent motion artifact into a precise spatial-temporal mapping mechanism that maintains measurement accuracy.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach enhances imaging flexibility and precision by reducing unwanted light, improving contrast, and allowing for real-time adjustments, resulting in more efficient and cost-effective confocal imaging systems that can handle diverse imaging applications with integrated spatial light modulators and rolling shutter technology.
Implementation Method 1
a spatial light modulator to modulate an illumination light
Implementation Method 2
a two-dimensional pixel array sensor to detect light scattered from the target by integrating over time
Implementation Method 3
a confocal aperture to spatially filter the scattered light
Implementation Method 4
Light scattered from the target
Data Source
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AI summary
A digital imaging device comprising a light source, a pixel array detector having a rolling shutter functionality, a spatial light modulator configured to produce one or more modulation patterns during a frame exposure of the pixel array detector, and at least one timing signal configured to control a spatial-temporal relationship between a rolling shutter of the pixel array detector and the one or more modulation patterns provided by the spatial light modulator.