Beneath the surface: revealing deep-tissue blood flow in human subjects with massively parallelized diffuse correlation spectroscopy

Significance: Diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) allows label-free, non-invasive investigation of microvascular dynamics deep within tissue, such as cerebral blood flow (CBF). However, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in DCS limits its effective cerebral sensitivity in adults, in which the depth to the brain, through the scalp and skull, is substantially larger than in infants.