Validation of Skin Perfusion Monitoring by Imaging PPG versus Laser Speckle Imaging

Assessment of skin perfusion can reveal signs of deterioration and help to prevent critical states. Commonly applied clinical tests to capture skin perfusion are subjective and often hard to quantify. Laser speckle contrast analysis (LASCA) is a technique that can capture skin perfusion at high spatial and temporal resolution. LASCA requires, however, a complex setting and is not suited for monitoring under clinical conditions. Imaging photoplethysmography (iPPG) might be an easy to use alternative. However, direct comparisons of LASCA and iPPG, and thus proves of iPPG’s capabilities to capture skin microperfusion, are rare. In this work, we compare the longitudinal development of the amplitude of green channel and near-infrared iPPG and LASCA after application of a hyperemic test. Our results show statistically significant increases in amplitude over time in all modalities. The maximum increase in median normalized amplitude is 1.281 for the green channel, 0.594 for near-infrared and 1.111 for LASCA. Median Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient of the amplitude for green channel and LASCA is r = 0.89 and r = 0.71 for near-infrared and LASCA.