  We report on a far above saturation absorption imaging technique to
investigate the characteristics of dense packets of ultracold atoms. The
transparency of the cloud is controlled by the incident light intensity as a
result of the non-linear response of the atoms to the probe beam. We detail our
experimental procedure to calibrate the imaging system for reliable
quantitative measurements, and demonstrate the use of this technique to extract
the profile and its spatial extent of an optically thick atomic cloud.
