Depth selective acousto-optic flow measurement.

Optical based methods for non-invasive measurement of regional blood flow tend to incorrectly assess cerebral blood flow, due to contribution of extra-cerebral tissues to the obtained signal. We demonstrate that spectral analysis of phase-coded light signals, tagged by specific ultrasound patterns, enables differentiation of flow patterns at different depths. Validation of the model is conducted by Monte Carlo simulation. In-vitro experiments demonstrate good agreement with the simulations' results and provide a solid validation to depth discrimination ability. These results suggest that signal contamination originating from extra-cerebral tissue may be eliminated using spectral analysis of ultrasonically tagged light.