Neuroimaging During Motion with Portable, Wearable Diffuse Optical Tomography

COEX 

While neuroimaging technologies have improved and expanded their capabilities, there has long been a gap in traditional neuroimaging technologies for a noninvasive, high-resolution, portable modality that tolerates participant movement. Established technologies like EEG may be used in real-world settings, but suffer from poor resolution, SNR, and motion susceptibility, while MRI has good spatial resolution, but creates a loud, cramped, unnatural scanning environment. MRI and PET are also stationary, and contraindicated in some populations. Wearable diffuse optical tomography (DOT) systems bridge this gap; our new wearable, high-density (WHD) DOT system offers portability and flexibility like EEG, spatial resolution similar to MRI, and improved robustness against motion artifacts versus fiber-based DOT systems.
DOT is an optical technique that uses multiple, overlapping measurements from high-density imaging arrays to generate 3D tomographic reconstruction of cortical blood oxygenation dynamics (Fig 1a). As with MRI, neuronal activity is inferred from blood oxygenation via neurovascular coupling. While fiber-based DOT systems have been extensively validated against MRI over the last decade, full head fiber DOT systems require that the subject's head remains relatively still. New, wearable DOT systems have recently begun to provide similar imaging performance with the added advantage of permitting subject movement.