Near-infrared 3D imaging with upconversion detection

We demonstrate a photon-sensitive, three-dimensional (3D) camera by active near-infrared illumination and fast time-of-flight gating. It uses picosecond pump pulses to selectively upconvert the backscattered photons accord-ing to their spatiotemporal modes via sum-frequency generation in a chi 2 nonlinear crystal, which are then detected by an electron-multiplying CCD with photon sensitive detection. As such, it achieves sub-millimeter depth res-olution, exceptional noise suppression, and high detection sensitivity. Our results show that it can accurately reconstruct the surface profiles of occluded targets placed behind highly scattering and lossy obscurants of 14 optical depth (round trip), using only milliwatt illumination power. This technique may find applications in biomedical imaging, environmental monitoring, and wide-field light detection and ranging. (c) 2022 Chinese Laser Press

Automated summary

We demonstrate a photon-sensitive, three-dimensional camera using active near-infrared illumination and fast time-of-flight gating. This camera achieves sub-millimeter depth resolution, exceptional noise suppression, and high detection sensitivity by selectively upconverting backscattered photons and photon sensitive detection. This technique may find applications in biomedical imaging, environmental monitoring, and wide-field light detection and ranging.