By Irene Hsiao
Postdoc Marco Allodi and graduate students John Otto, Ryan Wood, and Richard Mazuski of the Engel group have been developing a technique they call ORI (optical resonance imaging), an optical analog to MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). First proposed in ACS Photonics last November (Optical Resonance Imaging: An Optical Analog to MRI with Subdiffraction-Limited Capabilities), their method uses three quick pulses from a laser for precise imaging. The first two pulses excite the sample; the third, delivered at an angle to the first two, stimulates an optical emission. Measuring the arrival time of this pulse relative to that of a reference pulse allows a spatial and temporal measurement that the group anticipates will permit wide-field superresolution images with femtosecond time resolution.