System and method for rapid examination of vasculature and particulate flow using laser speckle contrast imaging

Inventors

Rege, Abhishek • Brooke, M. Jason • Murari, Kartikeya • Liu, Yusi

Assignees

Vasoptic Medical Inc

Abstract

Examination of the structure and function of blood vessels is an important means of monitoring the health of a subject. Such examination can be important for disease diagnoses, monitoring specific physiologies over the short- or long-term, and scientific research. This disclosure describes technology and various embodiments of a system and method for imaging blood vessels and the intra-vessel blood flow, using at least laser speckle contrast imaging, with high speed so as to provide a rapid estimate of vessel-related or blood flow-related parameters.

Core Innovation

The invention relates to a vascular imaging system that illuminates a target tissue with coherent light and captures reflected or scattered light using an image acquisition device. The system includes a first optical assembly directing coherent illumination to a region of interest and a second optical assembly directing reflected or scattered light from the region of interest to the image acquisition device. The system examines vasculature and intra-vessel particulate/blood flow by computing laser speckle contrast information from captured imaging frames.

A core aspect is processor-based calculation of laser speckle contrast values at any pixel in any acquired image frame using data from that pixel and a pixel’s adjacent spatial and temporal neighborhood. The neighborhood includes additional pixels in the same acquired frame and corresponding pixels from a predetermined number of adjacent previously acquired frames. The calculation also uses data from the acquired image frame to calculate second laser speckle contrast values for at least one subsequently acquired image frame.

The system performs rapid real-time or near-real-time spatiotemporal laser speckle contrast imaging based on the spatial and temporal neighborhood computation. The contrast measures are converted into blood-flow or velocity-related representations and are used to generate additional anatomical and physiological vessel information, including blood velocity, flow/perfusion, vessel diameter, vessel depth, vessel length and tortuosity, and artery-versus-vein classification cues. The system further supports visualization using pseudo-color overlay display and can be implemented with high-speed processing hardware such as FPGA-based processing to calculate speckle contrast and display results.

Claims Coverage

The provided partial content lists one independent claim. The independent claim covers a vascular imaging system that performs per-pixel laser speckle contrast calculation from spatial and temporal neighborhoods and updates contrast for subsequent frames based on current-frame data, enabling spatiotemporal laser speckle contrast imaging outputs.

Across the independent claim provided, the core claim coverage centers on computing laser speckle contrast values per pixel from combined spatial and temporal neighborhoods, and using current-frame data to compute contrast for subsequent frames, within a coherent-light vascular imaging system architecture that illuminates tissue and captures reflected or scattered light.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications