Three-dimensional imaging of macroscopic objects hidden behind scattering media using time-gated aperture synthesis

Precision measurement of the morphology of macroscopic objects has played an important role in many areas including the manufacturing, navigation, and safety fields. In some applications, objects of interest are often masked by scattering and/or turbid layers such that they remain invisible for existing methodologies. Here, we present a high depth-resolution three-dimensional (3D) macroscopy working through a scattering layer. In this implementation, we combined time-gated detection with synthetic aperture imaging to enhance single-scattered waves containing the object information above the background level set by the multiple scattering. We demonstrated the 3D mapping of the macroscopic object through a 13-scattering-mean-free-path thick scattering layer, where conventional digital holographic imaging failed to work, with the depth resolution of 400 mu m and view field of 30 x 30 mm(2). Our work is expected to broaden the range of applications covered by 3D macroscopy. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement