Speckle illumination SFDI for projector-free optical property mapping

Ultra-miniature dual-wavelength spatial frequency domain imaging for micro-endoscopy

Significance

There is a need for a cost-effective, quantitative imaging tool that can be deployed endoscopically to better detect early stage gastrointestinal cancers. Spatial frequency domain imaging (SFDI) is a low-cost imaging technique that produces near-real time, quantitative maps of absorption and reduced scattering coefficients, but most implementations are bulky and suitable only for use outside the body.

Aim

We aim to develop an ultra-miniature SFDI system comprising an optical fiber array (diameter 0.125 mm) and a micro camera (1 × 1    mm package) to displace conventionally bulky components, in particular, the projector.

Approach

First, we fabricated a prototype with an outer diameter of 3 mm, although the individual component dimensions could permit future packaging to a < 1.5    mm diameter. We developed a phase-tracking algorithm to rapidly extract images with fringe projections at three equispaced phase shifts to perform SFDI demodulation.

Results

To validate the performance, we first demonstrate comparable recovery of quantitative optical properties between our ultra-miniature system and a conventional bench-top SFDI system with an agreement of 15% and 6% for absorption and reduced scattering, respectively. Next, we demonstrate imaging of absorption and reduced scattering of tissue-mimicking phantoms providing enhanced contrast between simulated tissue types (healthy and tumour), done simultaneously at wavelengths of 515 and 660 nm. Using a support vector machine classifier, we estimate that sensitivity and specificity values of > 90 % are feasible for detecting simulated squamous cell carcinoma.

Conclusions

This device shows promise as a cost-effective, quantitative imaging tool to detect variations in optical absorption and scattering as indicators of cancer.

Quantitative hemodynamic imaging: a method to correct the effects of optical properties on laser speckle imaging

Significance

Studying cerebral hemodynamics may provide diagnostic information on neurological conditions. Wide-field imaging techniques, such as laser speckle imaging (LSI) and optical intrinsic signal imaging, are commonly used to study cerebral hemodynamics. However, they often do not account appropriately for the optical properties of the brain that can vary among subjects and even during a single measurement. Here, we describe the combination of LSI and spatial-frequency domain imaging (SFDI) into a wide-field quantitative hemodynamic imaging (QHI) system that can correct the effects of optical properties on LSI measurements to achieve a quantitative measurement of cerebral blood flow (CBF).

Aim

We describe the design, fabrication, and testing of QHI.

Approach

The QHI hardware combines LSI and SFDI with spatial and temporal synchronization. We characterized system sensitivity, accuracy, and precision with tissue-mimicking phantoms. With SFDI optical property measurements, we describe a method derived from dynamic light scattering to obtain absolute CBF values from LSI and SFDI measurements. We illustrate the potential benefits of absolute CBF measurements in resting-state and dynamic experiments.

Results

QHI achieved a 50-Hz raw acquisition frame rate with a 10 × 10    mm field of view and flow sensitivity up to ∼ 4    mm / s . The extracted SFDI optical properties agreed well with a commercial system (R 2 ≥ 0.98 ). The system showed high stability with low coefficients of variations over multiple sessions within the same day (< 1 % ) and over multiple days (< 4 % ). When optical properties were considered, the in-vivo hypercapnia gas challenge showed a slight difference in CBF (- 1.5 % to 0.5% difference). The in-vivo resting-state experiment showed a change in CBF ranking for nine out of 13 animals when the correction method was applied to LSI CBF measurements.

Conclusions

We developed a wide-field QHI system to account for the confounding effects of optical properties on CBF LSI measurements using the information obtained from SFDI.

Laser speckle contrast imaging based on spatial frequency domain filtering

We proposed a novel method to separate static and dynamic speckles based on spatial frequency domain filtering. First, the raw speckle image sequence is processed frame by frame through 2D Fourier transform, low-pass and high-pass filtering in the spatial frequency domain, and inverse Fourier transform. Then, we can obtain low- and high-frequency image sequences in the spatial domain. Second, we averaged both sequences in the time domain. After the above processing, we obtain the mean intensities of the dynamic and static speckle components in the spatial domain. Finally, we calculated the time-averaged modulation depth to map the 2-D blood flow distribution. Both phantom and vivo experiments demonstrated that the proposed method could effectively suppress the background non-uniformity and has the advantage of high computational efficiency. It also can effectively improve image contrast, contrast-to-noise ratio, and imaging dynamic range.

Designing and simulating realistic spatial frequency domain imaging systems using open-source 3D rendering software

Spatial frequency domain imaging (SFDI) is a low-cost imaging technique that maps absorption and reduced scattering coefficients, offering improved contrast for important tissue structures such as tumours. Practical SFDI systems must cope with various imaging geometries including imaging planar samples ex vivo, imaging inside tubular lumen in vivo e.g. for endoscopy, and measuring tumours or polyps of varying morphology. There is a need for a design and simulation tool to accelerate design of new SFDI systems and simulate realistic performance under these scenarios. We present such a system implemented using open-source 3D design and ray-tracing software Blender that simulates media with realistic absorption and scattering in a wide range of geometries. By using Blender's Cycles ray-tracing engine, our system simulates effects such as varying lighting, refractive index changes, non-normal incidence, specular reflections and shadows, enabling realistic evaluation of new designs. We first demonstrate quantitative agreement between Monte-Carlo simulated absorption and reduced scattering coefficients with those simulated from our Blender system, achieving 16 % discrepancy in absorption coefficient and 18 % in reduced scattering coefficient. However, we then show that using an empirically derived look-up table the errors reduce to 1 % and 0.7 % respectively. Next, we simulate SFDI mapping of absorption, scattering and shape for simulated tumour spheroids, demonstrating enhanced contrast. Finally we demonstrate SFDI mapping inside a tubular lumen, which highlighted a important design insight: custom look-up tables must be generated for different longitudinal sections of the lumen. With this approach we achieved 2 % absorption error and 2 % scattering error. We anticipate our simulation system will aid in the design of novel SFDI systems for key biomedical applications.

Single-Fiber Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy and Spatial Frequency Domain Imaging in Surgery Guidance: A Study on Optical Phantoms

Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and imaging are increasingly being used in surgical guidance for tumor margin detection during endoscopic operations. However, the accuracy of the boundary detection with optical techniques may depend on the acquisition parameters, and its evaluation is in high demand. In this work, using optical phantoms with homogeneous and heterogeneous distribution of chromophores mimicking normal and pathological bladder tissues, the accuracy of tumor margin detection using single-fiber diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and spatial frequency domain imaging was evaluated. We also showed how the diffuse reflectance response obtained at different spatial frequencies with the spatial frequency domain imaging technique could be used not only to quantitatively map absorption and scattering coefficients of normal tissues and tumor-like heterogeneities but also to estimate the tumor depth localization. The demonstrated results could be helpful for proper analysis of the DRS data measured in vivo and for translation of optical techniques for tumor margin detection to clinics.