Imaging of the skin microvascularization using spatially depolarized dynamic speckle

We propose a technique devoted to real-time high-resolution imaging of skin microvascularization.The process utilizes the temporal variation of the spatially depolarized optical speckle field generated by moving red blood cells when illuminated with fully polarized coherent light.Polarimetric filtering prevents the contribution of surface scattering from reaching the camera and thus favors the detection of multiscattered photons from the deeper layers of the skin.Full-field images reveal the microvasculature with a spatial resolution of 80 μm. The acquisition speed allows for real-time applications.We demonstrate the ability of this method to determine in 1 s a stable and reliable microvascular activity, enabling numerous clinical applications that require quantitative measurements.