In optical imaging, light propagation is affected by the heterogeneities of the refractive index. At shallow depths, these fluctuations induce wave-front distortions that degrade the image resolution and contrast. Beyond a few scattering mean free paths, multiple scattering starts to predominate and gives rise to a random speckle image without any connection with the medium reflectivity. To overcome these detrimental phenomena, we develop a general matrix approach of optical imaging and demonstrate its benefit by means of numerical simulations. By stacking a set of random phase screens, we model forward multiple scattering and its short-range memory effect. A computational multi-conjugate adaptive optics strategy is then proposed to exploit these snake photons ad optimize the focusing process at any point inside the medium.
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