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Updated: Feb 11, 2026

Mechanical Mapping of Spheroids Using Brillouin Spectroscopy
Published on: December 12, 2025
Brillouin micro-spectroscopy through aberrations via sensorless adaptive optics
Eitan Edrei1, Giuliano Scarcelli1
1Fischell Department of Bioengineering, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
Abstract:
Brillouin spectroscopy is a powerful optical technique for non-contact viscoelastic characterizations which has recently found applications in three-dimensional mapping of biological samples. Brillouin spectroscopy performances are rapidly degraded by optical aberrations and have therefore been limited to homogenous transparent samples. In this work, we developed an adaptive optics (AO) configuration designed for Brillouin scattering spectroscopy to engineer the incident wavefront and correct for aberrations. Our configuration does not require direct wavefront sensing and the injection of a "guide-star"; hence, it can be implemented without the need for sample pre-treatment. We used our AO-Brillouin spectrometer in aberrated phantoms and biological samples and obtained improved precision and resolution of Brillouin spectral analysis; we demonstrated 2.5-fold enhancement in Brillouin signal strength and 1.4-fold improvement in axial resolution because of the correction of optical aberrations.
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