Laser speckle imaging with an active noise reduction scheme

We present an optical scheme to actively suppress statistical noise in Laser Speckle Imaging ( LSI). This is achieved by illuminating the object surface through a diffuser. Slow rotation of the diffuser leads to statistically independent surface speckles on time scales that can be selected by the rotation speed. Active suppression of statistical noise is achieved by accumulating data over time. We present experimental data on speckle contrast and noise for a dynamically homogenous and a heterogeneous object made from Teflon. We show experimentally that for our scheme spatial and temporal averaging provide the same statistical weight to reduce the noise in LSI: The standard deviation of the speckle contrast value scales with the effective number N of independent speckle as 1/root N. (c) 2005 Optical Society of America.