Monitoring of tissue thermal modification with a bundle-based fullfield speckle analyzer

Speckle-contrast monitoring of laser-mediated tissue modification is examined for the specific case of delivery of speckle-modulated light from the tissue to detector (CCD camera) with a fiber-optic element (bundle). The influence of the transfer properties of a bundle-based optical system on the decorrelation rate of detected dynamic speckles is analyzed. Compared with the widely used method on the base of speckle-contrast analysis in the image plane, the considered technique is characterized by a more pronounced correlation between variations of the contrast of time-averaged speckle patterns and changes in the temperature of the modified tissue. The possibility of characterization of the modification kinetics (in particular, by the evaluation of the characteristic activation energy) using the developed speckle technique is demonstrated.