Noise reduction in functional near-infrared spectroscopy signals by independent component analysis

Rev Sci Instrum. 2013 Jul;84(7):073106. doi: 10.1063/1.4812785.

Abstract

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is used to detect concentration changes of oxy-hemoglobin and deoxy-hemoglobin in the human brain. The main difficulty entailed in the analysis of fNIRS signals is the fact that the hemodynamic response to a specific neuronal activation is contaminated by physiological and instrument noises, motion artifacts, and other interferences. This paper proposes independent component analysis (ICA) as a means of identifying the original hemodynamic response in the presence of noises. The original hemodynamic response was reconstructed using the primary independent component (IC) and other, less-weighting-coefficient ICs. In order to generate experimental brain stimuli, arithmetic tasks were administered to eight volunteer subjects. The t-value of the reconstructed hemodynamic response was improved by using the ICs found in the measured data. The best t-value out of 16 low-pass-filtered signals was 37, and that of the reconstructed one was 51. Also, the average t-value of the eight subjects' reconstructed signals was 40, whereas that of all of their low-pass-filtered signals was only 20. Overall, the results showed the applicability of the ICA-based method to noise-contamination reduction in brain mapping.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Hemodynamics
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
  • Male
  • Oxygen / metabolism
  • Prefrontal Cortex / metabolism
  • Prefrontal Cortex / physiology
  • Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted*
  • Signal-To-Noise Ratio
  • Spectrophotometry, Infrared / methods*
  • Statistics as Topic*

Substances

  • Oxygen