Low-cost compact diffuse speckle contrast flowmeter using small laser diode and bare charge-coupled-device

We report a low-cost compact diffuse speckle contrast flowmeter (DSCF) consisting of a small laser diode and a bare charge-coupled-device (CCD) chip, which can be used for contact measurements of blood flow variations in relatively deep tissues (up to ∼ 8  mm). Measurements of large flow variations by the contact DSCF probe are compared to a noncontact CCD-based diffuse speckle contrast spectroscopy and a standard contact diffuse correlation spectroscopy in tissue phantoms and a human forearm. Bland–Altman analysis shows no significant bias with good limits of agreement among these measurements: 96.5%±2.2% (94.4% to 100.0%) in phantom experiments and 92.8% in the forearm test. The relatively lower limit of agreement observed in the in vivo measurements (92.8%) is likely due to heterogeneous reactive responses of blood flow in different regions/volumes of the forearm tissues measured by different probes. The low-cost compact DSCF device holds great potential to be broadly used for continuous and longitudinal monitoring of blood flow alterations in ischemic/hypoxic tissues, which are usually associated with various vascular diseases.