Birefringence-induced phase delay enables Brillouin mechanical imaging in turbid media

Giuseppe Antonacci (), Renzo Vanna, Marco Ventura, Maria Lucia Schiavone, Cristina Sobacchi, Morteza Behrouzitabar, Dario Polli, Cristian Manzoni () and Giulio Cerullo
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Giuseppe Antonacci: Specto Photonics
Renzo Vanna: CNR-IFN
Maria Lucia Schiavone: IRCCS Humanitas Research Hospital
Cristina Sobacchi: IRCCS Humanitas Research Hospital
Morteza Behrouzitabar: Politecnico di Milano
Dario Polli: Specto Photonics
Cristian Manzoni: CNR-IFN
Giulio Cerullo: CNR-IFN

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Acoustic vibrations of matter convey fundamental viscoelastic information that can be optically retrieved by hyperfine spectral analysis of the inelastic Brillouin scattered light. Increasing evidence of the central role of the viscoelastic properties in biological processes has stimulated the rise of non-contact Brillouin microscopy, yet this method faces challenges in turbid samples due to overwhelming elastic background light. Here, we introduce a common-path Birefringence-Induced Phase Delay (BIPD) filter to disentangle the polarization states of the Brillouin and Rayleigh signals, enabling the rejection of the background light using a polarizer. We demonstrate a 65 dB extinction ratio in a single optical pass collecting Brillouin spectra in extremely scattering environments and across highly reflective interfaces. We further employ the BIPD filter to image bone tissues from a mouse model of osteopetrosis, highlighting altered biomechanical properties compared to the healthy control. Results herald new opportunities in mechanobiology where turbid biological samples remain poorly characterized.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49419-2

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