We develop a means for speckle-based phase imaging of the projected thickness of a single-material object, under the assumption of illumination by spatially random time-independent x-ray speckles. These speckles are generated by passing x rays through a suitable spatially random mask. The method makes use of a single image obtained in the presence of the object, which serves to deform the illuminating speckle field relative to a reference speckle field (which only needs to be measured once) obtained in the presence of the mask and the absence of the object. The method implicitly rather than explicitly tracks speckles, and utilizes the transport-of-intensity equation to give a closed-form solution to the inverse problem of determining the complex transmission function of the object. Implementation using x-ray synchrotron data shows the method to be robust and efficient with respect to noise. Applications include x-ray phase--amplitude radiography and tomography, as well as time-dependent imaging of dynamic and radiation-sensitive samples using low-flux sources.
Speckle contrast imaging is an established technique to obtain relative blood maps over wide field of views. Currently, its most accurate implementation relies on the acquisition of raw speckle images at different exposure times but requires modulation of a laser pulse in duration and intensity and precise synchronization with camera. This complex instrumentation has limited the use of multiple exposure speckle imaging. We evaluate here a simplified approach based on synthetic exposure images created from the sum of successive frames acquired with a 1 ms exposure time. Both methods have been a…
We present an intensity speckle simulation algorithm based on stochastic differential equations. Intensity speckles are generated with a negative exponential distribution and an exponential auto-correlation decay. The mean of the distribution is spatially varying dictated by photon diffusion to take into account of diffuse speckles. The algorithm is validated using simulation studies for both surface and deep tissue blood flow with potential applications in diffuse correlation spectroscopy.
Ultrasound speckle is a granular texture pattern appearing in ultrasound imaging. It can be used to distinguish tissues and identify pathologies. Lorentz force electrical impedance tomography is an ultrasound-based medical imaging technique of the tissue electrical conductivity. It is based on the application of an ultrasound wave in a medium placed in a magnetic field and on the measurement of the induced electric current due to Lorentz force. Similarly to ultrasound imaging, we hypothesized that a speckle could be observed with Lorentz force electrical impedance tomography imaging. In this s…
We develop a speckle-tracking method for x-ray phase-contrast imaging, based on the concept of geometric flow. This flow is a conserved current associated with deformation of illuminating x-ray speckles induced by passage through a sample. The method provides a rapid, efficient, and accurate algorithm for quantitative phase imaging. It is highly photon efficient and able to image dynamic objects, since a single radiograph of the sample is sufficient for the phase recovery. We experimentally quantify the resolution and contrast of the approach with both two-dimensional and three-dimensional pha…
Random matrix theory provides new insights into multiple scattering in random media. In a recent study, we demonstrated the statistical separation of single- and multiple-scattering components based on a Wishart random matrix. The first- and second-order moments were estimated through a Wishart random matrix constructed using dynamically-backscattered speckle images. In this study, this new strategy was applied to laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) of in-vivo blood flow. The random matrix-based method was adapted and parameterized using electric field Monte Carlo simulations and in-vitro bl…
Self-Portrait of the Focusing Process in Speckle: III. Tailoring Complex Spatio-Temporal Focusing Laws To Overcome Reverberations in Reflection Imaging
Significance: Speckle has historically been considered a source of noise in coherent light imaging. However, a number of works in optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging have shown that speckle patterns may contain relevant information regarding sub-resolution and structural properties of the tissues from which it is originated. Aim: The objective of this work is to provide a comprehensive overview of the methods developed for retrieving speckle information in biomedical OCT applications. Approach: PubMed and Scopus databases were used to perform a systematic review on studies published unt…
We previously demonstrated near-field speckle scanning based x-ray imaging to be an easy-to-implement phase sensing method capable of providing both high sensitivity and high resolution. Yet, this performance combination could only be achieved at the cost of a significant number of sample exposures and of extensive data acquisition time, thus tempering its implementation for tomography applications. Herein, we show ways of drastically lowering the number of exposures for the speckle scanning method to become attractive for computed tomography (CT) imaging. As the method presented can cope with…
