Laser speckle imaging combined with Noise Correlation inspired method for endoscopic elastography

Cancer screening is commonly done by a palpation to evaluate the stiffness. For the detection of colorectal cancer, an endoscopic approach is usually used. However, palpation is not possible in this situation. To tackle this issue, we developed in our team a passive elastography technique based on a noise correlation method, coupled with a digital holography setup. This contactless and high-resolution method for early detection has a limitation: the setup cannot be easily adapted to commercial endoscope. Our work here is to provide a solution using only a laser inside the endoscope, analyze and treat the speckle pattern to retrieve the stiffness map of the concerned area. The first results using speckle contrast combined with noise correlation inspired method is presented.