How can unwanted effects be used to map the dynamics of cerebral blood flow: The redemption of speckle and blurriness

Speckle contrast optical spectroscopy/tomography (SCOS/SCOT) is a low-cost, non-invasive, and real-time optical imaging system for mapping cerebral blood flow (CBF) dynamics in humans. SCOS/SCOT is an attractive method because of the increased signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) relative to the diffuse correlation spectroscopy, a gold-standard optical technique, and its capability to fill the gap of current technique in clinics. However, the recent camera-based detector system is not ideal for imaging a large area of the human brain because of the limited area of focus over the contour of the head and hair occluding the field of view. Currently, our study focuses on designing and building a fiber-based SCOT system to enable imaging in humans. We utilized speckle and blurriness, two effects that researchers were trying to eliminate, to obtain flow information and gave them a second chance in life.