Soft Materials Seminar - "High-fidelity Optical Recording of Bioelectric Potentials using Polymer Optical Anisotropy"

Bioelectric signals provide direct insight into the dynamic electrical activity underlying cardiac and neural function. However, optical recording of these signals can be strongly affected by mechanical artifacts, particularly in contractile tissues such as the heart. We exploit the optical and electrochromic anisotropy of PEDOT to develop a polarization-based approach for high-fidelity optical electrophysiology. Differential detection of orthogonal polarization channels suppresses common-mode mechanical artifacts while retaining the voltage-dependent optical response, thereby improving the fidelity of bioelectric potential recordings and demonstrating how material anisotropy can enhance optical bioelectronic sensing.