Time-dependent speckle in holographic optical coherence imaging and the health of tumor tissue.

Holographic optical coherence imaging acquires en face images from successive depths inside scattering tissue. In a study of multicellular tumor spheroids the holographic features recorded from a fixed depth are observed to be time dependent, and they may be classified as variable or persistent. The ratio of variable to persistent features, as well as speckle correlation times, provides quantitative measures of the health of the tissue. Studies of rat osteogenic sarcoma tumor spheroids that have been subjected to metabolic and cross-polymerizing poisons provide quantitative differentiation among healthy, necrotic, and poisoned tissue. Organelle motility in healthy tissue appears as super-Brownian laser speckle, whereas chemically fixed tissue exhibits static speckle.