Image transmission through an optical fiber using real-time modal phase restoration

Theoretical analysis of a method for transmitting a complex image field through a single multimode optical fiber is presented. Using a known reference image, we show that it would be possible to evaluate the instantaneous modal dispersion of the fiber and use the knowledge of accumulated modal phases to recover the object field. For measuring the complex object and reference fields emanating from the fiber, we propose using a simple arrangement of two cameras for recording the intensity and Fourier images, followed by a modified Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm for full complex field reconstruction. While some experimental challenges could still be expected in any future implementation of this approach, we believe it would eventually allow the first image transmission through a long, multimode optical fiber.