Imaging functional blood vessels by the laser speckle imaging (LSI) technique using Q-statistics of the generalized differences algorithm

• Imaging functional blood vessels with laser speckle imaging using Q-statistics of generalized differences algorithm.
• The method uses the dynamic speckle signals create an activity maps of vasculatures.
• Appropriate choice of q values enhances the visibility of functional vessels but at the same time without sacrificing the spatial resolution.
• The adopted method improved the vessel contrast of the perfusion maps, comparatively to the standard generalized differences, mainly during large exposure times (1000 ms).

In this work, we report about q statistics concept to improve the performance of generalized differences algorithm based on intensity histogram for imaging functional blood vessel structures in a rodent window chamber of a mice. The method uses the dynamic speckle signals obtained by transilluminating the rodent window chamber to create activity maps of vasculatures. The proposed method of generalized differences with q statistics (GDq) is very sensitive to the values of defined parameters such as: camera exposure time, the q value and the camera frame number. Appropriate choice of q values enhances the visibility (contrast) of functional blood vessels but at the same time without sacrificing the spatial resolution, which is of utmost importance for in-vivo vascular imaging.