Abstract
Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) estimates the functional oscillations of oxyhemoglobin and deoxyhemoglobin in the cortex through scalp-located multiwavelength recordings. Hemoglobin oscillations are inferred through temporal changes in continuous-wave (CW) light attenuation. However, because of the diffusive multilayered head tissue structures, the photon path is longer than the source-detector separation, complicating hemoglobin evaluation. This aspect is incorporated in the modified Beer-Lambert law where the source-detector distance is multiplied by the differential pathlength factor (DPF). Since DPF estimation requires photons' time-of-flight information, DPF is assumed a priori in CW-fNIRS. Importantly, errors in the DPF spectrum induce hemoglobin cross talk, which is detrimental for fNIRS. We propose to estimate subject-specific DPF spectral dependence relying on multidistance high-density measurements. The procedure estimates the effective attenuation coefficient (EAC), which is proportional to the geometric mean of absorption and reduced scattering. Since DPF depends on the scattering-to-absorption ratio, EAC limits the spectral dependence assumption to scattering. This approach was compared to a standard frequency-domain multidistance procedure. A good association between the two methods ( ) was obtained. This approach could estimate low-resolution maps of the DPF spectral dependence through large field of view, high-density systems, reducing hemoglobin cross talk, and increasing fNIRS sensitivity and specificity to brain activity without instrumentation modification.
Highlights
The most common application of near-infrared (NIR) light for studying the human brain is functional near-infrared spectroscopy.[1,2] By shining constant [continuous-wave (CW)] NIR (∼650 to 950 nm) light into the scalp and by measuring the diffuse reflectance at different wavelengths (λ), CWfNIRS allows us to study cortical changes in oxyhemoglobin (O2Hb) and deoxyhemoglobin (HHb) concentrations
Correct estimation of differential pathlength factor (DPF) spectral dependence is crucial in CWfNIRS, since errors in the evaluation of its spectrum creates cross talk in the retrieval of O2Hb and HHb modulations from light recordings (Fig. 3)
Multidistance measurements of the effective attenuation coefficient (EAC) from high-density CW-fNIRS recordings was employed to empirically estimate DPF spectrum by limiting the a priori assumption to the spectral dependence of reduced scattering, which is generally more predictable than absorption spectrum
Summary
The most common application of near-infrared (NIR) light for studying the human brain is functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).[1,2] By shining constant [continuous-wave (CW)] NIR (∼650 to 950 nm) light into the scalp and by measuring the diffuse reflectance at different wavelengths (λ), CWfNIRS allows us to study cortical changes in oxyhemoglobin (O2Hb) and deoxyhemoglobin (HHb) concentrations. Due to the diffusive nature of biological structures in such spectral range, NIR light propagation through tissues is a complex process.[6,7,8,9]
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