Laser speckle contrast imaging has become a widely used tool for dynamic imaging of blood flow, both in animal models and in the clinic. Typically, laser speckle contrast imaging is performed using scientific-grade instrumentation. However, due to recent advances in camera technology, these expensive components may not be necessary to produce accurate images. In this paper, we demonstrate that a consumer-grade webcam can be used to visualize changes in flow, both in a microfluidic flow phantom and in vivo in a mouse model. A two-camera setup was used to simultaneously image with a high performance monochrome CCD camera and the webcam for direct comparison. The webcam was also tested with inexpensive aspheric lenses and a laser pointer for a complete low-cost, compact setup ($90, 5.6 cm length, 25 g). The CCD and webcam showed excellent agreement with the two-camera setup, and the inexpensive setup was used to image dynamic blood flow changes before and after a targeted cerebral occlusion.

Multiple studies have demonstrated that laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) has high potential to be a valuable cerebral blood flow monitoring technique during neurosurgery. However, the quantitative accuracy and sensitivity of LSCI is limited, and highly dependent on the exposure time. An extension to LSCI called multi-exposure speckle imaging (MESI) overcomes these limitations, and was evaluated intraoperatively in patients undergoing brain tumor resection. This clinical study ( n = 8) recorded multiple exposure times from the same cortical tissue area spanning 0.5-20 ms, and evaluated images individually as single-exposure LSCI and jointly using the MESI model. This study demonstrated that the MESI estimates provided the broadest flow sensitivity for sampling the flow magnitude in the human brain, closely followed by the shorter exposure times. Conservation of flow analysis on vascular bifurcations was used to validate physiological accuracy, with highly conserved flow estimates (<10%) from both MESI and 1 ms LSCI ( n = 14 branches). The MESI model had high goodness-of-fit with proper image calibration and acquisition, and was used to monitor blood flow changes after tissue cautery. Results from this study demonstrate that intraoperative MESI can be performed with high quantitative accuracy and sensitivity for cerebral blood flow monitoring.

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