Abstract

Near-field terahertz (THz) imaging is expected to have a broad impact for biological applications [1], such as cellular imaging and molecular imaging (water distribution, status in the living cells, the conformational dynamics of the large biomolecules and so on). A lot of work has been done to develop THz microscopes with high spatial resolution beyond the diffraction limit [2]. However, even if a spatial resolution below 10 μm was successfully achieved at THz frequency, the traditional schemes remain all based on raster scanning techniques [3,4], and typical measurement time takes more than 10 minutes to obtain a full image. Since samples are changing its conditions with time for biological applications, real-time acquisition is needed in addition to the high resolution.

© 2011 Optical Society of America