Dynamic speckle model for simulating fiber-based laser speckle contrast imaging (fb-LSCI)

Abstract

Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging (LSCI) measurements provide sufficient information on the changes in the tissue dynamics using spatial contrast measurements over an integration time. To allow the adoption of LSCI in humans, we propose a fiber-based LSCI system that has the potential to overcome free-space imaging of Speckle Contrast Optical Tomography (SCOT) while maintaining the high-speed imaging of LSCI. Here, we propose Dynamic Speckle Model (DSM) to develop the noise model for fiber-based LSCI (fb-LSCI) taking into account all the noise sources. We have identified operating parameter space i.e. small speckle to pixel ratio and long exposure time to minimise the impact of noise sources on the contrast measured. The performance of fb-LSCI is compared with other methods that measure changes in tissue dynamics such as DCS.