Enhancing vascular visualization in laser speckle contrast imaging of blood flow using multi-focus image fusion.

Laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) is a full-field optical imaging method for monitoring blood flow and vascular morphology with high spatiotemporal resolution. However, due to the limited depth of field of optical system, it is difficult to capture a clear blood flow image with all blood vessels focused, especially for the non-planar biological tissues. In this study, a multi-focus image fusion method based on contourlet transform is introduced to reduce the misfocus effects in LSCI. The experimental results suggest that this method can provide an all-in-focus blood flow image, which is convenient to observe the blood vessels.