From astronomy and telecommunications to biomedicine
2015
Photonics is an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor, as technologies and techniques invented or developed in one
scientific field are often found to be applicable to other fields or disciplines. We present two case studies in which
optical spectroscopy technologies originating from stellar astrophysics and optical telecommunications multiplexing
have been successfully adapted for biomedical applications. The first case involves a design concept called the High
Throughput Virtual Slit, or HTVS, which provides high spectral resolution without the throughput inefficiency typically
associated with a narrow spectrometer slit. HTVS-enhanced spectrometers have been found to significantly improve the
sensitivity and speed of fiber-fed Raman analysis systems, and the method is now being adapted for hyperspectral
imaging for medical and biological sensing. The second example of technology transfer into biomedicine centers on
integrated optics, in which optical waveguides are fabricated on to silicon substrates in a substantially similar fashion as
integrated circuits in computer chips. We describe an architecture referred to as OCTANE which implements a small and
robust "spectrometer-on-a-chip” which is optimized for optical coherence tomography (OCT). OCTANE-based OCT
systems deliver three-dimensional imaging resolution at the micron scale with greater stability and lower cost than
equivalent conventional OCT approaches. Both HTVS and OCTANE enable higher precision and improved reliability
under environmental conditions that are typically found in a clinical or laboratory setting.
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