Biotechnology

Biology

Diffuse optical imaging

Biological imaging

Photon counting

Time of flight

Telecommunications

Iterative reconstruction

Computer science

Photon

Tomography

In vivo

Physics

Medical imaging

Optics

Fluorescence

Artificial intelligence

Frame rate

Optical imaging

Computer vision

Frame (networking)

Molecular imaging

Nature Photonics

Imaging through a strongly diffusive medium remains an outstanding challenge, in particular in applications in biological and medical imaging. Here, we propose a method based on a single-photon time-of-flight camera that allows, in combination with computational processing of the spatial and full temporal photon distribution data, imaging of an object embedded inside a strongly diffusive medium over more than 80 transport mean free paths. The technique is contactless and requires 1 s acquisition times, thus allowing Hz frame rate imaging. The imaging depth corresponds to several centimetres of human tissue and allows us to perform deep-body imaging as a proof of principle. By combining a single-photon time-of-flight camera with computational processing of the spatial and full temporal photon distribution data, an object embedded inside a strongly diffusive medium can be imaged over more than 80 transport mean free paths in a contactless manner on the timescale of the order of 1 s.

Computational time-of-flight diffuse optical tomography