Noninvasive megapixel fluorescence microscopy through scattering layers by a virtual reflection-matrix

Abstract: Optical-resolution fluorescence imaging through and within complex samples presents a significant challenge due to random light scattering, with substantial implications across multiple fields. While significant advancements in coherent imaging through severe multiple scattering have been recently introduced by reflection-matrix processing, approaches that tackle scattering in incoherent fluorescence imaging have been limited to sparse targets, require high-resolution control of the illumination or detection wavefronts, or a very large number of measurements. Here, we present an approach that allows direct application of well-established reflection-matrix techniques to scattering compensation in incoherent fluorescence imaging. We experimentally demonstrate that a small number of conventional widefield fluorescence-microscope images acquired under unknown random illuminations can effectively construct a fluorescence-based virtual reflection matrix. This matrix, when processed by conventional matrix-based scattering compensation algorithms, allows reconstructing megapixel-scale fluorescence images, without requiring the use of spatial-light modulators (SLMs) or computationally-intensive processing.