We present an optical coherence tomography (OCT) based method for mapping transverse red blood cell (RBC) flow speed at capillary. This OCT velocimetry utilizes a quantitative laser speckle temporal contrast analysis that estimates reliable speckle decorrelation time from the observed speckle contrast, which is related to microcirculatory flow velocity. For capillary speed measurement, we employ a home-built 1.3 µm MHz swept-source OCT (SS-OCT) system that can acquire OCT B-frames at a rate of 1.7 kHz. From the multiple B-frames obtained at the same location, intensity profiles with time-varying OCT speckle contrast are extracted at single capillaries using a capillary binary mask and then the transverse flow speed is calculated by adapting the profiles to the speckle contrast analytic model. Finally, a 3D speed map can be achieved for OCT volume imaging. To validate this method, we perform a systematic study using both phantom and in vivo rodent models. Result shows that our method is effective to measure transverse capillary flow speed.
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