Anderson Jessica E, Carlton Laura B, Kura Sreekanth, O'Brien Walker J, Rogers De'Ja, Rahimi Parisa, Farzam Parya Y, Zaman Muhammad H, Boas David A, Yücel Meryem A
Boston University, Neurophotonics Center, Biomedical Engineering, Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
Boston University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
Neurophotonics. 2025 Jul;12(3):035010. doi: 10.1117/1.NPh.12.3.035010. Epub 2025 Sep 2.
Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) enables neuroimaging in scenarios where other modalities are less suitable, such as during motion tasks or in low-resource environments. Sparse fNIRS arrays with 30 mm channel spacing are widely used but have limited spatial resolution. High-density (HD) arrays with overlapping, multidistance channels improve sensitivity and localization but increase costs and setup times. A statistical comparison of HD and sparse arrays is needed for evaluating the benefits and trade-offs of HD arrays.
This study provides a statistical comparison of HD and sparse fNIRS performance to inform array selection in future research.
We measured prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation during congruent and incongruent word-color Stroop (WCS) tasks using both sparse and HD arrays for 17 healthy adult participants, comparing dorsolateral PFC channel and image results at the group level.
Although both arrays detected activation in channel space during incongruent WCS, channel and image space results demonstrated superior localization and sensitivity with the HD array for all WCS.
Sparse channel data may suitably detect activation from cognitively demanding tasks, such as incongruent WCS. However, the HD array outperformed sparse in detecting and localizing brain activity in image space, particularly during lower cognitive load tasks, making it more suitable for neuroimaging applications.
功能近红外光谱技术（fNIRS）能够在其他成像方式不太适用的场景中进行神经成像，例如在运动任务期间或资源匮乏的环境中。通道间距为30毫米的稀疏fNIRS阵列被广泛使用，但空间分辨率有限。具有重叠多距离通道的高密度（HD）阵列提高了灵敏度和定位能力，但增加了成本和设置时间。需要对HD阵列和稀疏阵列进行统计比较，以评估HD阵列的优势和权衡。
本研究对HD和稀疏fNIRS的性能进行统计比较，为未来研究中的阵列选择提供参考。
我们使用稀疏阵列和HD阵列，对17名健康成年参与者在一致和不一致的文字-颜色斯特鲁普（WCS）任务期间的前额叶皮质（PFC）激活进行了测量，并在组水平上比较了背外侧PFC通道和图像结果。
尽管在不一致的WCS任务期间，两种阵列都在通道空间中检测到了激活，但通道和图像空间结果表明，HD阵列在所有WCS任务中具有更好的定位和灵敏度。
稀疏通道数据可能适当地检测来自认知要求较高任务（如不一致的WCS）的激活。然而，HD阵列在图像空间中检测和定位大脑活动方面优于稀疏阵列，特别是在较低认知负荷任务期间，使其更适合神经成像应用。
