High speed terahertz reflection imaging

摘要

Terahertz imaging has shown great potential in several biomedical areas such as burn imaging, detection of skin cancer, and pharmaceutical tablet imaging. The development of each of these application has been limited by slow imaging speed (tens of minutes to hours) and small scan areas (less than 10 square centimeters). Elsewhere to date, the sample itself must be mechanically raster scanned due to the free space optical coupling of femtosecond laser pulses driving the terahertz generating and detecting elements. This paper reports on the development of a freely positionable fiber optic coupled terahertz transceiver which may be raster scanned over a stationary object. Image acquisition times of less than 8 minutes for a 20x20 cm area (400 sq cm area) raster scanning a terahertz transceiver over a stationary object; and of less than 1 minute for image acquisition with a movable object raster scanning the object have been demonstrated. High speed stationary imaging will allow the practical investigation on human and animal subjects.