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.