REMOTE MICROSCOPY, NANOSCOPY AND PICOSCOPY BY HYPERSPECTRAL LIDAR

Introduction

HyperSense will spearhead hyperspectral lidars expanded to exotic spectral regions outside the imaginable by the lidar community. It will demonstrate stand-off biosensing beyond what can be resolved by existing methods by employing plasma and supercontinuum light sources.

Technology Overview

Leveraging my patented hyperspectral Scheimpflug lidar concept, adding an uncontested number of spectral bands, spatio-temporal resolution, and sensitivity, we will reveal aspects of our biosphere inaccessible by existing lidars. Active remote sensing of our biosphere uncovers details that cannot be resolved in space and time by sunlight, such as:

• Protein absorbance shielded by the ozone layer
• Life in dark ocean depths
• Narrow oxygen lines in a breath
• Nocturnal movements of disease vectors

Lidar constitutes an efficient measurement technique where the same light transilluminates a volume until it interacts with the sample and simultaneously reports range and backscatter quantitatively. Hyperspectral lidar also provides microscopic absorption path lengths, nano-features on biological surfaces, and deformations of electron shells on the picometer scale.

Project Goals

HyperSense will explode multiple boundaries of current lidar technology, demonstrating and revolutionizing biomonitoring through my inexpensive, robust, compact, and portable Scheimpflug method.

Applications

HyperSense comprises 4 novel hyperspectral lidars with short, long, narrow, and broad spectral coverage, applied to 8 biological challenges, showcasing light-biology interactions on the micro, nano, and picoscopic level:

1. DUV lidar (220-440 nm): Biomolecules specificity for classification of pollen and lichen.
2. Aquatic lidar (400-800 nm): Profile plankton biodiversity using both oscillatory and spectral properties.
3. Hires NIR lidar (760-762 nm): Resolving O2 and temperature in breath to understand host seeking and hill-topping in insects.
4. SWIR lidar (900-2500 nm): Quantify the surface nanostructures, internal tissue microstructure, and molecular composition of vegetation and aerofauna.