Quantitative flow measurements with laser speckle contrast imaging

Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging (LSCI) is a minimally invasive full field optical technique used to generate blood flow maps with good spatial and temporal resolutions. In an effort to make the technique more quantitative, a new speckle contrast imaging instrument is presented, which enables speckle images to be collected at different exposure times. A new speckle model is proposed which accounts for the presence of static scattered light in measurements. Microfluidic flow phantoms are used as a tool to validate the instrument and the model. Controlled flow experiments were performed with the microfluidic devices to show that the new instrument is better in estimating relative flow changes than traditional methods. The new model was used to predict correlation times to within 6% accuracy in the presence of static scattering, a four fold increase over traditional single exposure methods.