Tracking of blood flow within living tissue, such as in laboratory animals, is often done using a technique called laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI). The equipment used to do this technique tends to be high-end and expensive, so a team of biomedical engineers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a laboratory-grade LSCI system made from off-the-shelf components that costs less than $100 to build.
They used a $5 laser pen, a $35 webcam, and a couple simple camera lenses for the rig and compared its performance to a “professional” system costing thousands of dollars. When looking at blood flow within a laboratory mouse, as well as a phantom microfluidic model, the budget LSCI system performed as well as the high end one. The team plans to further develop the system to allow for a wider field of view and greater optical resolution.
The webcam setup (right) is just about as effective as the more expensive CCD camera setup (left) at showing the reduction in blood flow following a stroke. The green circle shows the stroke’s affected area. Credit: Andrew Dunn, University of Texas – Austin
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