Automated Power Control for Mobile Laser Speckle Imaging System

Recently, Laser Speckle Imaging (LSI) has been applied to measure blood perfusion in human skin. Attractive features of LSI are its temporal resolution and relatively simple instrumentation. The progressive reduction in the cost and size of camera technology now enables development of mobile LSI instrumentation. To reduce the size of LSI to a mobile platform, we are faced with new challenges in terms of reducing power consumption and heat without sacrificing detection accuracy. To address these challenges, we propose pulsed laser operation using a new automated power control (APC) circuit. By synchronizing the pulses to the laser diode driver with the camera shutter, the camera detects a similar raw speckle image as before while consuming only a small fraction of the power. Furthermore, the reduced power consumption in turn keeps the temperature of the case low, increasing the stability of the system. We validated our solution using simulations in Pspice, and we evaluated the operation of the circuit using a prototype APC board and a commercial camera.