GIST Develops Optical Imaging Technology for Measuring Cerebral Blood Flow

New Treatment Prospects for Stroke and Vascular Diseases

Overall schematic and example experimental method of a quantitative cerebral blood flow measurement system based on laser speckle. Photo by GIST.

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters, Reporter Cho Hyung-joo] An optical imaging technology capable of quantitatively measuring changes and speed of cerebral blood flow has been developed.

GIST (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology) announced on the 23rd that Professor Jeong Ui-heon’s team from the Department of Biomedical Engineering succeeded in developing a system that quantitatively measures changes and speed of cerebral blood flow when cerebral infarction occurs on the cerebral surface by analyzing speckles, interference patterns generated by irradiating laser beams onto the brain.

Laser speckle is an interference pattern in the form of spotted marks generated by the interaction between particles and laser light when laser beams are irradiated onto objects such as biological tissues. In biological tissues, information such as the movement of blood cells is reflected in continuous speckle images.

Existing research methods could observe changes before and after blood flow movement but had limitations in measuring the speed of blood flow. The research team developed a method to quantitatively measure the speed of dynamically changing blood flow in real time using only speckle analysis without mathematical modeling or calibration.

This study utilized the principle that the real-time movement of blood cells inside blood vessels in living biological tissues is reflected in laser speckles.

Professor Jeong Ui-heon said, "This research overcomes the limitations of existing laser speckle imaging and proposes a methodology to quantitatively analyze biological blood flow speed, which is expected to be applied in the future to the development of stroke treatments based on animal models and clinical research on vascular diseases."

This research was led by Professor Jeong Ui-heon (corresponding author) and conducted by doctoral student Mosin Qureshi from the Department of Biomedical Engineering (first author). It was supported by the Korea Research Foundation’s Mid-career Researcher Support Program and GIST Research Institute (GRI). The related paper was published online on the 13th in Optica, a prestigious journal in the field of optics.

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