Improved calibration procedure for laser Doppler perfusion monitors

Abstract

Commercial laser Doppler perfusion monitors are calibrated using the perfusion value, i.e. the first order moment of the Doppler power spectrum, from a measurement in a standardized microsphere colloidal suspension under Brownian motion. The calibration perfusion value depends on several parameters of the suspension that are difficult to keep constant with adequate accuracy, such as the concentration, temperature and the microsphere size distribution. The calibration procedure itself may therefore introduce significant errors in the measured values. An altered calibration procedure, where the zero order moment is used is described and demonstrated in this paper. Since the above mentioned parameters only affect the frequency content of the Doppler power spectrum and not the total power, the zero order moment will be independent of those parameters. It is shown that the variation in the calibration value, as given by measurements on different scattering liquids with a wide range of scattering properties and temperatures, is only a few percent using the proposed method. For the conventional calibration procedure, this variation corresponds to an error introduced by merely a 1°C variation in the reference liquid temperature. The proposed calibration method also enables absolute level comparisons between measured and simulated Doppler power spectra.