Light control in a multicore fiber using the memory effect

Endoscopic imaging through a multicore fiber (MCF) is widely used but is affected by pixelated images, which limits its resolution to a few micrometers. This is due to the spacing between the cores in the MCF, which is large enough to avoid core-to-core light coupling. Wavefront shaping techniques have been shown to focus light to a resolution finer than the inter core spacing, however a long calibration procedure is needed. Moreover the calibration depends on the optical fiber conformation. Here, we show a calibration method using only one digital hologram. The method is based on digital phase conjugation and the memory effect of the MCF to focus and scan a spot. In addition, we show how simple patterns can be projected using the same multicore fiber. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America