We investigate and assess the utility of a simple scheme for continuous absolute blood flow monitoring based on diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS). The scheme calibrates DCS using venous-occlusion diffuse optical spectroscopy (VO-DOS) measurements of arm muscle tissue at a single time-point. A calibration coefficient (γ) for the arm is determined, permitting conversion of DCS blood flow indices to absolute blood flow units, and a study of healthy adults (N = 10) is carried out to ascertain the variability of γ. The average DCS calibration coefficient for the right (i.e., dominant) arm was γ = (1.24 ± 0.15) x 108 (mL ⋅ 100 mL-1 ⋅ min-1)/(cm²/s). However, variability can be significant and is apparent in our site-to-site and day-to-day repeated measurements. The peak hyperemic blood flow overshoot relative to baseline resting flow was also studied following arm-cuff ischemia; excellent agreement between VO-DOS and DCS was found (R² = 0.95, slope = 0.94 ± 0.07, mean difference = -0.10 ± 0.45). Finally, we show that incorporation of subject-specific absolute optical properties significantly improves blood flow calibration accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]