Doctoral Dissertations

Keywords and Phrases

Light Scattering; Optical Remission; Optical Sensitivity; Optics; Wave Transport Phenomena; Wavefront Shaping

Abstract

"Diffuse electromagnetic waves are widely used for non-invasive sensing and imaging in complex scattering media such as biological tissues. A fundamental limitation of such techniques is the scarcity of detected photons: as the source-detector separation increases to access deeper regions of the medium, the signal strength decays rapidly, leading to poor signal-to-noise ratio and limited sensitivity. This dissertation addresses this challenge through a combination of theory and computation.

We show that coherent control of the incident optical wavefront can compensate for the scarcity of detected photons that limits conventional diffuse optical imaging, typically performed in the near-infrared spectral region. By exploiting wave interference, we identify the input wavefront that maximizes the remitted light --- light re-emerging on the source side of the medium --- reaching the detector, producing an order-of-magnitude increase in the detected signal. We further show that this optimal wavefront indirectly enhances the sensitivity of the detected signal to changes deep inside the medium, while remaining fully compatible with existing diffuse optical tomography reconstruction methods. Finally, we develop a microscopic wave theory, validated by numerical simulations, that quantitatively predicts these enhancements and explains them in terms of interference effects neglected by conventional diffusion theory.

Coherent wave control in realistic systems remains computationally challenging. We show that the remission geometry can be simulated efficiently using the open-source software MESTI (Maxwell's Equations Solver with Thousands of Inputs), achieving orders-of-magnitude speedups over previous methods, and by introducing OSCAR (On-Shell Compression And Reconstruction), a compression scheme that reduces wave-field storage by up to a factor of 380 while preserving the accuracy of physically relevant quantities. Together, these advances enable efficient large-scale simulations of coherent wave control in diffusive media, with applications in biomedical imaging and beyond"-- Abstract, p. iv

Advisor(s)

Yamilov, Alexey

Committee Member(s)

Chernatynskiy, Aleksandr V.
Fischer, Daniel
Cao, Hui
Jentschura, Ulrich D., 1969-

Department(s)

Physics

Degree Name

Ph. D. in Physics

Publisher

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Publication Date

2026

Journal article titles appearing in thesis/dissertation

Paper I: Pages 19-38 have been published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Science Journal, PNAS. © 2022 National Academy of Sciences.

Paper II: Pages 39-44 have been published by the Proceedings of the 2023 International Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society Symposium (ACES), IEEE.©2023 IEEE.

Paper III: Pages 45-91 have been published by Physical Review Applied Journal. © 2025 American Physical Society.

Paper IV: Pages 92-123 have been submitted to Physical Review E journal,PRE.

Pagination

xii, 170 pages

Note about bibliography

Includes_bibliographical_references_(pages 166-169)

Rights

© 2026 Pablo Xavier Jara Palacios , All Rights Reserved

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Thesis Number

T 12619

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