Diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) is an established diffuse optical technique that uses the analysis of temporal speckle intensity fluctuations to measure blood flow in tissue. As a non-invasive technique, DCS has been used to monitor patient cerebral blood flow at the bedside. Though an effective measurement tool, extra-cerebral contamination of the DCS signal limits the sensitivity to changes in brain blood flow. In order to overcome this depth sensitivity challenge, we present a method, overlapping volumes, acousto-optic modulated DCS (AOM-DCS), to improve sensitivity to deeper tissue structures.
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