Reproducibility of fNIRS within Subject for Visual and Motor Tasks

Julie C. Wagner, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Marquette University and Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States.
Anthony Zinos, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Marquette University and Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States.
Scott A. Beardsley, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Marquette University and Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States; Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States. Electronic address: scott.beardsley@marquette.edu.
Wei-Liang Chen, Center for Neuroscience Research, Children's National Medical Center, George Washington University, Washington, DC, United States.
Lisa Conant, Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States.
Marsha Malloy, Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States; Department of Neurology, Children's Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States.
Joseph Heffernan, Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States.
Brendan Quirk, Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States.
Robert Prost, Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States.
Mohit Maheshwari, Department of Radiology, Children's Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States.
Jeffrey Sugar, Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States.
Harry T. Whelan, Department of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States; Department of Neurology, Children's Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States.

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

9-30-2025

Journal

NeuroImage

DOI

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2025.121492

Keywords

fNIRS; motor cortex; reproducibility; visual cortex

Abstract

Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is becoming a popular metric to noninvasively identify brain activity through assessing changes in oxygenated (HbO) and deoxygenated (HbR) hemoglobin concentration. Several aspects of fNIRS imaging are appealing for clinical applications but the reproducibility of fNIRS signals has yet to be determined over several sessions. To address this, four participants completed at least ten sessions on separate days where they performed Motor and Visual tasks while fNIRS signals were measured from 102 channels spanning the entire head. Reproducibility was quantified as the percentage of significant task related activity occurring across sessions at the channel and source levels (anatomically specific and default head models) via Region of Interest (ROI) and vertex-wise analyses. To improve source localization, digitized optode positions from each session were used with the anatomy specific source localization. Individual differences in reproducibility were present yet task-related changes in HbO were significantly more reproducible over sessions than changes in HbR (F(1, 66) = 5.03, p<0.05). Increased shifts in optode position correlated with less spatial overlap across sessions for each participant. Further steps can be taken to increase the reliability of capturing brain activity with fNIRS by improving upon data acquisition and analysis techniques.

Department

Neurological Surgery

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