Holographic laser Doppler imaging of pulsatile blood flow

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates real-time wide-field holographic laser Doppler imaging to visualize pulsatile blood flow in the thumb, linking optical Doppler signals to skin motion and blood pulse measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of heterodyne holographic interferometry for non-invasive, real-time imaging of pulsatile blood flow over a wide field.

Findings

Optical Doppler images correlate with blood pulse during occlusion-reperfusion.

Skin motion velocities of a few hundreds of microns per second were measured.

The method enables real-time visualization of pulsatile blood flow.

Abstract

We report on wide-field imaging of pulsatile motion induced by blood flow using heterodyne holographic interferometry on the thumb of a healthy volunteer, in real-time. Optical Doppler images were measured with green laser light by a frequency-shifted Mach-Zehnder interferometer in off-axis configuration. The recorded optical signal was linked to local instantaneous out-of-plane motion of the skin at velocities of a few hundreds of microns per second, and compared to blood pulse monitored by plethysmoraphy during an occlusion-reperfusion experiment.