On-the-fly adaptive SNR protocol to accelerate Brillouin microscopy

This article presents an innovative method for accelerating Brillouin microscopy imaging. The proposed technique, called One-pass, dynamically adjusts the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) during data acquisition. It identifies essential spectra in real-time and adapts the laser exposure time accordingly. This approach considerably reduces acquisition time (by a factor around 2.2 and 3.5) while maintaining acceptable image quality, as demonstrated on simulations and real biological samples (HeLa and SK-N-SH cells). The method improves the stability and efficiency of Brillouin imaging compared with conventional techniques, i.e., raster scan with a single long exposure time or the recently introduced two-pass approach.