Comparison of scanning beam and whole field laser Doppler perfusion imaging

Currently, laser perfusion imaging (LDPI) is undergoing a technology shift from scanning beam perfusion imagers to whole field systems. The latter can be subdivided in laser Doppler methods systems based on high speed CMOS cameras, and laser speckle contrast analysis (LASCA) technologies using slow imaging arrays, mostly CCD-based. In scanning beam systems, a collimated laser beam scans the tissue with diffusely back reflected light being captured with a single detector. In whole field systems a large tissue area is illuminated, and the reflected light is imaged onto an array and captured at once. Unlike scanning beam systems, both whole field methods enable perfusion imaging at video rate. In this study we experimentally compare the scanning beam LDPI principle with whole field LDPI, using Intralipid phantoms. For the tissue phantoms, the Monte Carlo simulation technique will be used as a reference. From measurements on Intralipid phantoms compared to Monte Carlo, we conclude that in whole field LDPI the flux image, representing the first order moment of the power spectrum of photocurrent fluctuations is much closer related to real perfusion than for scanning beam systems. This difference can be explained in terms of the different behaviour of dynamic speckle patterns generated in both methods, in response to varying tissue optical properties.