Wavefront shaping is a powerful technique that transforms disordered speckles into coherent optical foci through active modulation, offering significant potential for optical imaging and information delivery. However, its practical application faces substantial challenges, particularly due to the dynamic variation of speckles over time, which requires the development of fast and adaptive wavefront shaping systems.

This study introduces a coded self-referencing wavefront shaping system designed for rapid transmission matrix measurement and wavefront control. By encoding both signal and reference light within a single beam for probing complex media, this method effectively addresses key limitations of traditional approaches, such as interference noise in interferometric holography, loss of controllable elements in coaxial interferometry, and the computational burden of non-holographic phase retrieval methods.

Fig. 1. Schematic illustration of the operational principles for various transmission matrix measurement methods. a. Interferometric holographic configuration. b. Coaxial interferometric setup. c. Non-interferometric phase retrieval. d. Proposed coded self-referencing method.

Experimental demonstrations of optical focusing through complex scattering media, including unfixed multimode fibers and stacked ground glass diffusers, show the system's capability. The system achieved runtimes of 21.90 ms and 76.26 ms for 256 and 1024 controllable elements, respectively, with corresponding average mode times of 85.54 μs and 74.47 μs—pushing the system to its hardware limits.

Table 1. Time consumption comparison between the two configurations.

Additionally, the system's robustness against dynamic scattering was validated by maintaining optical focus through moving diffusers. As the diffuser velocity increased, the correlation time of the scattering process decreased. To assess the method's performance under dynamic scattering conditions, we achieved optical focusing using 256 controllable elements at diffuser velocities of 0.001 mm/s, 0.01 mm/s, and 0.1 mm/s. Despite the wavefront shaping system's operational time of 21.90 ms for 256 controllable elements, a bright optical focus was still achieved, demonstrating the system's robustness in dynamic scattering environments.

Fig. 2. Evaluation of optical focusing against dynamic scattering with 256 controllable elements. a. Schematic of the experimental setup using moving stacked ground glass diffusers. b. Plot of correlation time as a function of inverse diffuser velocity. c. Experimental results demonstrating optical focusing at diffuser velocities of 0.001 mm/s, 0.01 mm/s, and 0.1 mm/s. Scale bar: 0.5 mm.

The system's ability to parallelly measure multiple rows of the transmission matrix makes it highly efficient in controlling large-scale transmission matrices. The method's potential for real-time optical applications in fields like imaging, communication, and sensing is particularly promising for environments with complex and dynamic scattering. This work, titled "Coded self-referencing wavefront shaping for fast dynamic scattering control" published in Advanced Imaging 2025, showcases significant advancements in high-speed, reference-less wavefront shaping techniques, offering a versatile solution for future optical technologies.