High-speed multi-exposure laser speckle contrast imaging with a single-photon counting camera

Abstract

Laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) has emerged as a valuable tool for cerebral blood flow (CBF) imaging. We present a multiexposure laser speckle imaging (MESI) method which uses a high-frame rate acquisition with a negligible inter-frame dead time to mimic multiple exposures in a single-shot acquisition series. Our approach takes advantage of the noise-free readout and high-sensitivity of a complementary metaloxide- semiconductor (CMOS) single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) array to provide real-time speckle contrast measurement with high temporal resolution and accuracy. To demonstrate its feasibility, we provide comparisons between in vivo measurements with both the standard and the new approach performed on a mouse brain, in identical conditions.