Development of an optoelectronic holographic platform for otolaryngology applications

Abstract

In this paper, we present advances on our development of an optoelectronic holographic computing platform with the ability to quantitatively measure full-field-of-view nanometer-scale movements of the tympanic membrane (TM). These measurements can facilitate otologists' ability to study and diagnose hearing disorders in humans. The holographic platform consists of a laser delivery system and an otoscope. The control software, called LaserView, is written in Visual C++ and handles communication and synchronization between hardware components. It provides a user-friendly interface to allow viewing of holographic images with several tools to automate holography-related tasks and facilitate hardware communication. The software uses a series of concurrent threads to acquire images, control the hardware, and display quantitative holographic data at video rates and in two modes of operation: optoelectronic holography and lensless digital holography. The holographic platform has been used to perform experiments on several live and post-mortem specimens, and is to be deployed in a medical research environment with future developments leading to its eventual clinical use.