Portable, field-based neuroimaging using high-density diffuse optical tomography

Publication date: Available online 24 January 2020Source: NeuroImageAuthor(s): Andrew K. Fishell, Ana María Arbeláez, Claudia P. Valdés, Tracy M. Burns-Yocum, Arefeh Sherafati, Edward J. Richter, Margarita Torres, Adam T. Eggebrecht, Christopher D. Smyser, Joseph P. CulverAbstractBehavioral and cognitive tests in individuals who were malnourished as children have revealed malnutrition-related deficits that persist throughout the lifespan. These findings have motivated recent neuroimaging investigations that use highly portable functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) instruments to meet the demands of brain imaging experiments in low-resource environments and enable longitudinal investigations of brain function in the context of long-term malnutrition. However, recent studies in healthy subjects have demonstrated that high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT) can significantly improve image quality over that obtained with sparse fNIRS imaging arrays. In studies of both task activations and resting state functional connectivity, HD-DOT is beginning to approach the data quality of fMRI for superficial cortical regions. In this work, we developed a customized HD-DOT system for use in malnutrition studies in Cali, Colombia. Our results evaluate the performance of the HD-DOT instrument for assessing brain function in a cohort of malnourished children. In addition to demonstrating portability and wearability, we show the HD-DOT instrument's sensitivity to distributed...
Source: NeuroImage - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research