Portable Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy of Potato Leaves for Pre-Symptomatic Detection of Late Blight Disease.

We report on the use of leaf diffuse reflectance spectroscopy for plant disease detection. A smartphone-operated, compact diffused reflectance spectrophotometer is used for field collection of leaf diffuse reflectance spectra to enable pre-symptomatic detection of the progression of potato late blight disease post inoculation with oomycete pathogen Phytophthora infestans. Neural-network-based analysis predicts infection with >96% accuracy, only 24 h after inoculation with the pathogen, and nine days before visual late blight symptoms appear. Our study demonstrates the potential of using portable optical spectroscopy in tandem with machine learning analysis for early diagnosis of plant diseases.

Smartphone based optical spectrometer for diffusive reflectance spectroscopic measurement of hemoglobin.

We report a miniature, visible to near infrared G-Fresnel spectrometer that contains a complete spectrograph system, including the detection hardware and connects with a smartphone through a microUSB port for operational control. The smartphone spectrometer is able to achieve a resolution of ~5 nm in a wavelength range from 400 nm to 1000 nm. We further developed a diffuse reflectance spectroscopy system using the smartphone spectrometer and demonstrated the capability of hemoglobin measurement. Proof of concept studies of tissue phantoms yielded a mean error of 9.2% on hemoglobin concentration measurement, comparable to that obtained with a commercial benchtop spectrometer. The smartphone G-Fresnel spectrometer and the diffuse reflectance spectroscopy system can potentially enable new point-of-care opportunities, such as cancer screening.

Iteratively seeded mode-locking.

Ultrashort pulsed mode-locked lasers enable research at new time-scales and revolutionary technologies from bioimaging to materials processing. In general, the performance of these lasers is determined by the degree to which the pulses of a particular resonator can be scaled in energy and pulse duration before destabilizing. To date, milestones have come from the application of more tolerant pulse solutions, drawing on nonlinear concepts like soliton formation and self-similarity. Despite these advances, lasers have not reached the predicted performance limits anticipated by these new solutions. In this letter, towards resolving this discrepancy, we demonstrate that the route by which the laser arrives at the solution presents a limit to performance which, moreover, is reached before the solution itself becomes unstable. In contrast to known self-starting limitations stemming from suboptimal saturable absorption, we show that this limit persists even with an ideal saturable absorber. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this limit can be completely surmounted with an iteratively seeded technique for mode-locking. Iteratively seeded mode-locking is numerically explored and compared to traditional static seeding, initially achieving a five-fold increase in energy. This approach is broadly applicable to mode-locked lasers and can be readily implemented into existing experimental architectures.

Divided pulse soliton self-frequency shift: a multi-color, dual-polarization, power-scalable, broadly tunable optical source.

A versatile, broadly tunable, power scalable, multi-line, ultrafast source is presented, the operation of which is based on combining principles of pulse division with the phenomenon of the soliton self-frequency shift (SSFS). Interferometric pulse recombination is demonstrated showing that the source can decouple the generally limiting relationship between the output power and the center wavelength in SSFS-based optical sources. Broadly tunable two- and four-color soliton self-frequency shifted pulses are experimentally demonstrated. Simultaneous dual-polarization second-harmonic generation was performed with the source, demonstrating one novel imaging methodology that the source can enable. It is expected that this source architecture will be useful for advancing current nonlinear optical imaging methodologies.

G-Fresnel smartphone spectrometer.

We report a smartphone spectrometer with nanometer resolution working in the visible range. A G-Fresnel device with the dual functionality of focusing and dispersion is used to enable miniaturization. Proof of principle application to Bradford assay of protein concentration is also demonstrated.

Holographic coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering bio-imaging.

CARS holography captures both the amplitude and the phase of a complex anti-Stokes field, and can perform three-dimensional imaging by digitally focusing onto different depths inside a specimen. The application of CARS holography for bio-imaging is demonstrated. It is shown that holographic CARS imaging of sub-cellular components in live HeLa cells can be achieved.

Proposal and demonstration of a spectrometer using a diffractive optical element with dual dispersion and focusing functionality.

We propose an optical spectrometer using a hybrid grating-Fresnel (G-Fresnel) diffractive optical element. Theoretical simulation shows that a spectral resolution of approximately 1 nm can be potentially achieved with a millimeter-sized G-Fresnel. A proof-of-concept G-Fresnel-based spectrometer with subnanometer spectral resolution is experimentally demonstrated. The proposed method provides a promising new way for realizing compact optical spectrometers.

Demonstration of a PDMS based hybrid grating and Fresnel lens (G-Fresnel) device.

A hybrid device that we term G-Fresnel (i.e., grating and Fresnel) is demonstrated. It fuses the functions of a grating and a Fresnel lens into a single device. We have fabricated the G-Fresnel device by using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) based soft lithography. Three-dimensional surface profilometry has been performed to examine the device quality. We have also conducted optical characterizations to confirm its dual focusing and dispersing properties. The G-Fresnel can be useful for the development of miniature optical spectrometers as well as emerging optofluidic applications.

Supercontinuum trap stiffness measurement using a confocal approach.

We report a novel method for characterizing the stiffness of white light supercontinuum tweezers, in which the nonlinear photonic crystal fiber used for supercontinuum generation is also utilized as an effective confocal pinhole to track the motion of a trapped bead and as a scan head to realize rapid scanning of the optical trap. By measuring the phase of the bead's motion in following the trap, a lateral stiffness value of about 7.9 µN/m was obtained with supercontinumm power of about 75 mW. Our technique can potentially allow for trap stiffness calibration along an arbitrary direction in three dimensions.