Koh, P.H.; (2007) Methodology of optical topography measurements for functional brain imaging and the development and implementation of functional optical signal analysis software. Doctoral thesis , University of London.

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Abstract

Near-infrared spectroscopy (N1RS) has been used extensively in recent years as a non invasive tool for investigating cerebral hemodynamics and oxygenation. The technique exploits the different optical absorption of oxy-haemoglobin and deoxy-haemoglobin in the near infrared region to measure changes in their concentrations in tissue. By making multiple NIRS measurement simultaneously, optical topography (OT) provides spatial maps of the changes in haemoglobin concentration levels from specific regions of the cerebral cortex. The thesis describes several key developments in optical topography studies of functional brain activation. These include the development of a novel data analysis software to process the experimental data and a new statistical methodology for examining the spatial and temporal variance of OT data. The experimental work involved the design of a cognitive task to measure the haemodynamic response using a 24-channeI Hitachi ETG-100 OT system. Following a series of pilot studies, a study on twins with opposite handedness was conducted to study the functional changes in the parietal region of the brain. Changes in systemic variables were also investigated. A dynamic phantom with optical properties similar to those of biological tissues was developed with the use of liquid crystals to simulate spatially varying changes in haemodynamics. A new software tool was developed to provide a flexible processing approach with real time analysis of the optical signals and advanced statistical analysis. Unlike conventional statistical measures which compare a pre-defined activation and task periods, the thesis describes the incorporation of a Statistical Parametric Mapping toolbox which enables statistical inference about the spatially-resolved topographic data to be made. The use of the general linear model computes the temporal correlations between the defined model and optical signals but also corrects for the spatial correlations between neighbouring measurement points. The issues related to collecting functional activation data using optical topography are fully discussed with a view that the work presented in this thesis will extend the applicability of this technology.

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