Physics-Informed Neural Network for Mapping Vascular and Tissue Dynamics Using Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging

Significance Quantitatively mapping both cerebral blood flow and tissue dynamics from laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) is powerful for studying cerebral blood flow in general and neural-vascular coupling and stroke in particular. Conventional multi-exposure fitting is slow and difficult to scale. Efficient, physically grounded methods are needed to extract both vascular and tissue dynamic biomarkers from LSCI data. Aim To develop and validate a physics-informed neural network (PINN) that quantitatively estimates fast (vascular) and slow (tissue-related) speckle decorrelation parameters directly from LSCI measurements without requiring ground-truth labels. Approach We developed a physics-informed neural network (PINN) to estimate fast (vascular) and slow (tissue-related) speckle decorrelation parameters directly from multi-exposure LSCI data without requiring ground-truth labels. The analytical LSCI model is embedded in the network loss function, enforcing consistency with speckle physics during training. The model operates in a self-supervised manner and performs pixel-wise inference across full-field images. The framework was evaluated using in vivo mouse stroke LSCI datasets. Results The PINN accurately recovered fast decorrelation rates associated with cerebral blood flow and slower dynamics linked to tissue and cellular motion. The parameter maps closely match those from traditional nonlinear fitting, but at orders-of-magnitude higher speed, reducing analysis from several hours to two seconds per image. It also generalizes to unseen subjects and remains robust under noise. Conclusions Our approach establishes physics-informed learning as a practical framework for near real-time extraction of vascular and cellular biomarkers from LSCI, enabling longitudinal monitoring of stroke progression and potentially facilitating clinical translation.