DESIGN OF AN EXPERIMENTAL LASER SPECKLE CONTRAST IMAGING SYSTEM AND IMAGE EVALUATION

Laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) is a noninvasive method, which uses scattered light to estimate the flow of a fluid containing scatterers. Thus, it can be especially used to estimate blood flow. Laser light is randomly scattered on the tissue and this refracted light interfere with reflected light, giving birth to laser speckle noise. As the light scatters on moving red blood cells, the speckle pattern is blurred due to the exposition time. This blurring is a function of velocity which can be estimated from the degree of blur, termed as speckle contrast. Therefore, blood cells act like contrast agent, outlining blood vessels. The simple setup, unnecessary contrast agent and unharming nature are making LSCI a popular tool for studying blood flow dynamics and vascular structure. This paper presents a new, simple experimental setup and image processing methods to treat laser speckle images aiming to estimate relative blood flow and vascular structure