Multimode fiber-based endoscopes have recently emerged as a tool for minimally invasive endoscopy in tissue, at depths well beyond the reach of multiphoton imaging. Here, we demonstrate label-free second-harmonic generation (SHG) microscopy through such a fiber endoscope. We simultaneously fully control the excitation polarization state and the spatial distribution of the light at the fiber tip, and we use this to implement polarization-resolved SHG imaging, which allows imaging and identification of structural proteins such as collagen and myosin. We image mouse tail tendon and heart tissue, employing the endoscope at depths up to 1 mm, demonstrating that we can differentiate these structural proteins. This method has the potential for enabling instant and in situ diagnosis of tumors and fibrotic conditions in sensitive tissue with minimal damage.

The interferometric acquisition of the transmission matrix (TM) of a multimode optical fibre (MMF), which is at the heart of multimode fibre-based endoscopic imaging methods, requires using a reference beam. Attempts to use an internal reference, that is to provide the reference in a common pathway geometry through the MMF itself, lead to a speckled reference intensity and consequential occurrence of “blind spots”—locations where insufficient optical power in the reference wave inflicts strong measurement errors. Here we show that combining a relatively small number of TMs, which are measured using different internal references, facilitates a complete elimination of blind spots, and thereby a significant enhancement of the imaging quality.

Both thermal diffusivity and effusivity (or conductivity) are necessary to characterize the thermal transport properties of a material. The flash method is the most recognized procedure to measure the thermal diffusivity of free-standing opaque plates. However, it fails to simultaneously obtain the thermal effusivity (or conductivity). This is due to the difficulty of knowing the total energy absorbed by the sample surface after the light pulse. In this work, we propose using the flash method in the front-face configuration on a two-layer system made of the unknown plate and a fluid of known thermal properties. We demonstrate that the surface temperature is sensitive to the thermal mismatch between the plate and the fluid, which is governed by their thermal effusivity ratio. In order to verify the validity of the method and to establish its application limits we have performed flash measurements, using a pulsed laser and an infrared camera, on a set of calibrated materials (metals, alloys, ceramics and polymers) covering a wide range of thermal transport properties. These results confirm the ability of the flash method to simultaneously retrieve thermal diffusivity and effusivity in a fast manner in samples whose effusivities are lower than three times the effusivity of the liquid used as backing fluid.