High-fidelity near-diffraction-limited projection through scattering with reference-less transmission matrix

Abstract: Image projection through scattering media has applications ranging from light delivery through multimode fiber to near-eye displays. Conventional methods utilize the transmission matrix (TM) measured by interfering with a reference beam. However, it is noise-sensitive, often resulting in artifacts that degrade the projection quality. Here we propose to characterize the scattering by computationally retrieving TM from intensity-only measurements and solve the projection problem formulated with the retrieved TM by optimization. We experimentally validate the proposed method by projecting through a multimode fiber. Compared to the conventional methods, it projects improved-quality images with resolution near to the diffraction limit, and simplifies the experimental setup by eliminating the reference. It paves the way for applications of high-quality near-diffraction-limited projection through scattering.