pyspeckle

pyspeckle is a Python library for generating and analyzing laser speckle fields. It provides reproducible numerical implementations of physically motivated speckle models used in optical metrology, coherent imaging, and biomedical photonics.

The methods implemented in this package are derived from Duncan & Kirkpatrick (Algorithms for simulation of speckle (laser and otherwise), Proc. SPIE 6855, 2008). These algorithms unify a variety of simulation approaches across:

objective speckle (non-imaged fields),
subjective speckle (imaged fields),
static speckle, and
dynamic speckle including translation, strain, boiling, and decorrelation.

Scientific Context

Coherent imaging systems—including SAR, OCT, ultrasound, ESPI, and laser speckle contrast imaging—produce granular interference patterns defined by the random phase relationships of scattered waves.

Representative Outputs

1D speckle

2D speckle

Documentation

Full documentation and algorithm demonstrations are available at:

https://pyspeckle2.readthedocs.io

Try in JupyterLite (no install required):

https://scottprahl.github.io/pyspeckle/

Installation

pip:

pip install pyspeckle

conda:

conda install -c conda-forge pyspeckle

Citation

If you use pyspeckle in academic, instructional, or applied technical work, please cite:

Prahl, S. (2026). pyspeckle: Tools for objective and subjective laser speckle analysis (Version 0.6.1) [Computer software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8311677

BibTeX

@software{pyspeckle_prahl_2026,
  author    = {Scott Prahl},
  title     = {pyspeckle: Tools for objective and subjective laser speckle analysis},
  year      = {2026},
  version   = {0.6.1},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.8311677},
  url       = {https://github.com/scottprahl/pyspeckle},
  publisher = {Zenodo}
}

License

pyspeckle is released under the MIT License. Contributions are welcome.