. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Apr 1.

Published in final edited form as: Microcirculation. 2019 Apr;26(3):e12440. doi: 10.1111/micc.12440

Table 4.

Comparison of characteristics of laser techniques.

	Laser Doppler Flowmetry	Laser Doppler Imaging	Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging
Speed	Fast at capturing changes in cutaneous perfusion	Slow at capturing changes in cutaneous perfusion	Fast at capturing changes in cutaneous perfusion
Reproducibility	Poor^*	Good	Good
Skin contact	Needed	Not needed	Not needed
Area of assessment	Single point^* (≤1 mm³)	Wide	Wide
Depth of skin penetration	1–1.5 mm		300 μm
Disadvantage	Regional heterogeneity of skin perfusion leads to high spatial variability	Not good at recording rapid changes in the perfusion	Not good for assessing areas of low perfusion, movement artifacts

Integrated probes are available that provide better reproducibility and capture a larger area.