Imaging through scattering media with the auxiliary of a known reference object

Imaging through scattering media has been one of the main challenges in optics, and are encountered in many different disciplines of sciences, ranging from biology, mesoscopic physics to astronomy. Recently, various methods have been proposed. In this manuscript, we propose a robust method for imaging through scattering media in a reflective geometry, a scenario widely encountered in non-invasive and marker-free biological imaging. The proposed method relies on the a priori information of a known reference object in the neighborhood of the target, and uses it as an auxiliary to reconstruct the target image. We show that the target image can be analytically reconstructed from the autocorrelation of the recorded speckle if the reference is point-like, otherwise, deconvolution with the reference speckle should be performed. We experimentally demonstrate the proposed method in a proof-of-concept system with an LED illumination through a thick ground glass.