Accuracy in dynamic laser speckle: optimum size of speckles for temporal and frequency analyses

The dynamic laser-speckle phenomenon has been used as a potential tool to monitor the activity of many biological and nonbiological samples; however, a key tailoring of the experimental configuration must be taken into account to avoid wrong measurements, since the general rules addressed to speckle as information cannot be directly adopted in dynamic laser-speckle monitoring. The speckle/pixel size ratio is provided by the f-number and by the magnification of the macro lens, and attention is mainly directed toward adjusting a speckle/pixel ratio higher than 1. However, a speckle/pixel ratio much higher than one does not mean an optimum adjustment. This work tested different apertures with fixed magnification yielding to monitor a drying paint process. The outcomes were evaluated in the time and frequency domains. The highest speckle/pixel size ratio was not the best to monitor the process using the dynamic laser speckle under frequency analysis. Tailoring of the devices must take into account the optimum speckle/pixel size ratio, which could vary depending on the application, and the known Nyquist theorem cannot be considered as a sufficient condition since the setup of the optical camera with its macro and iris must also be adjusted in accordance with the frequency response.