Devices and methods for speckle motion artifact detection and compensation in medical imaging

Abstract

A device for providing reference information in laser speckle medical imaging of tissue of a subject can include a support that includes a marker for image recognition and a speckle target region that is nontransparent to light in a first illumination wavelength range and that generates a speckle pattern when illuminated with light in the first wavelength range. The support can be configured to be attachable to tissue of the subject.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method for compensating for speckle motion artifacts in medical laser speckle imaging of a target tissue area, comprising:
 providing a series of laser speckle images of the target, the series of images acquired by a laser speckle imaging device;   calculating a measure of relative motion between a first image in the series and a second image in the series; and   correcting the image data of the second image to compensate for speckle motion artifacts by scaling the image data by a scaling factor and by subtracting an offset value from the image data, wherein the scaling factor and the offset value are based on the calculated measure of relative motion.