Evaluating multi-exposure speckle imaging estimates of absolute autocorrelation times

Multi-exposure speckle imaging (MESI) is a camera-based flow-imaging technique for quantitative blood-flow monitoring by mapping the speckle-contrast dependence on camera exposure duration. The ability of laser speckle contrast imaging to measure the temporal dynamics of backscattered and interfering coherent fields, in terms of the accuracy of autocorrelation measurements, is a major unresolved issue in quantitative speckle flowmetry. MESI fits for a number of parameters including an estimate of the electric field autocorrelation decay time from the imaged speckles. We compare the MESI-determined correlation times in vitro and in vivo with accepted true values from direct temporal measurements acquired with a photon-counting photon-multiplier tube and an autocorrelator board. The correlation times estimated by MESI in vivo remain on average within 14±11% of those obtained from direct temporal autocorrelation measurements, demonstrating that MESI yields highly comparable statistics of the time-varying fields that can be useful for applications seeking not only quantitative blood flow dynamics but also absolute perfusion.