Departments of Biomedical Engineering, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York 11794-8181, USA.
A dual-wavelength laser speckle contrast imaging technique (DW-LSCI) is presented for simultaneous imaging of cerebral blood flow and hemoglobin oxygenation changes at high spatiotemporal resolutions. Experimental validation was performed using a rat transient forebrain ischemia model. The results showed that DW-LSCI was able to track detailed hemodynamic and metabolic changes induced by ischemia, i.e., decreased oxy- and total hemoglobin concentrations and blood flow as well as increased deoxy-hemoglobin concentration in the downstream regions, thus allowing us to distinguish cerebral arterial and venous flows. Simultaneous cerebral blood flow and oxygenation imaging at high spatiotemporal resolutions is crucial to the understanding of neural process and brain functions.