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Hirvi P, Kuutela T, Fang Q, Hannukainen A, Hyvönen N, Nissilä I. Effects of atlas-based anatomy on modelled light transport in the neonatal head. Phys Med Biol 2023; 68:135019. [PMID: 37167982 PMCID: PMC10460200 DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/acd48c] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/08/2022] [Revised: 04/21/2023] [Accepted: 05/11/2023] [Indexed: 05/13/2023]
Abstract
Objective.Diffuse optical tomography (DOT) provides a relatively convenient method for imaging haemodynamic changes related to neuronal activity on the cerebral cortex. Due to practical challenges in obtaining anatomical images of neonates, an anatomical framework is often created from an age-appropriate atlas model, which is individualized to the subject based on measurements of the head geometry. This work studies the approximation error arising from using an atlas instead of the neonate's own anatomical model.Approach.We consider numerical simulations of frequency-domain (FD) DOT using two approaches, Monte Carlo simulations and diffusion approximation via finite element method, and observe the variation in (1) the logarithm of amplitude and phase shift measurements, and (2) the corresponding inner head sensitivities (Jacobians), due to varying segmented anatomy. Varying segmentations are sampled by registering 165 atlas models from a neonatal database to the head geometry of one individual selected as the reference model. Prior to the registration, we refine the segmentation of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) by separating the CSF into two physiologically plausible layers.Main results.In absolute measurements, a considerable change in the grey matter or extracerebral tissue absorption coefficient was found detectable over the anatomical variation. In difference measurements, a small local 10%-increase in brain absorption was clearly detectable in the simulated measurements over the approximation error in the Jacobians, despite the wide range of brain maturation among the registered models.Significance.Individual-level atlas models could potentially be selected within several weeks in gestational age in DOT difference imaging, if an exactly age-appropriate atlas is not available. The approximation error method could potentially be implemented to improve the accuracy of atlas-based imaging. The presented CSF segmentation algorithm could be useful also in other model-based imaging modalities. The computation of FD Jacobians is now available in the widely-used Monte Carlo eXtreme software.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pauliina Hirvi
- Aalto University, Department of
Mathematics and Systems Analysis, PO Box 11100, FI-00076 AALTO,
Finland
| | - Topi Kuutela
- Aalto University, Department of
Mathematics and Systems Analysis, PO Box 11100, FI-00076 AALTO,
Finland
| | - Qianqian Fang
- Northeastern University, Department of
Bioengineering, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115, United States of
America
| | - Antti Hannukainen
- Aalto University, Department of
Mathematics and Systems Analysis, PO Box 11100, FI-00076 AALTO,
Finland
| | - Nuutti Hyvönen
- Aalto University, Department of
Mathematics and Systems Analysis, PO Box 11100, FI-00076 AALTO,
Finland
| | - Ilkka Nissilä
- Aalto University, Department of
Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, PO Box 12200, FI-00076 AALTO,
Finland
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Maria A, Hirvi P, Kotilahti K, Heiskala J, Tuulari JJ, Karlsson L, Karlsson H, Nissilä I. Imaging affective and non-affective touch processing in two-year-old children. Neuroimage 2022; 251:118983. [PMID: 35149231 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.118983] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/07/2021] [Revised: 12/22/2021] [Accepted: 02/07/2022] [Indexed: 10/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Touch is an important component of early parent-child interaction and plays a critical role in the socio-emotional development of children. However, there are limited studies on touch processing amongst children in the age range from one to three years. The present study used frequency-domain diffuse optical tomography (DOT) to investigate the processing of affective and non-affective touch over left frontotemporal brain areas contralateral to the stimulated forearm in two-year-old children. Affective touch was administered by a single stroke with a soft brush over the child's right dorsal forearm at 3 cm/s, while non-affective touch was provided by multiple brush strokes at 30 cm/s. We found that in the insula, the total haemoglobin (HbT) response to slow brushing was significantly greater than the response to fast brushing (slow > fast). Additionally, a region in the postcentral gyrus, Rolandic operculum and superior temporal gyrus exhibited greater response to fast brushing than slow brushing (fast > slow). These findings confirm that an adult-like pattern of haemodynamic responses to affective and non-affective touch can be recorded in two-year-old subjects using DOT. To improve the accuracy of modelling light transport in the two-year-old subjects, we used a published age-appropriate atlas and deformed it to match the exterior shape of each subject's head. We estimated the combined scalp and skull, and grey matter (GM) optical properties by fitting simulated data to calibrated and coupling error corrected phase and amplitude measurements. By utilizing a two-compartment cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) model, the accuracy of estimation of GM optical properties and the localization of activation in the insula was improved. The techniques presented in this paper can be used to study neural development of children at different ages and illustrate that the technology is well-tolerated by most two-year-old children and not excessively sensitive to subject movement. The study points the way towards exciting possibilities in functional imaging of deeper functional areas near sulci in small children.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ambika Maria
- University of Turku, Department of Clinical Medicine, Turku Brain and Mind Center, FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study, Finland; University of Turku and Turku University Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, Finland
| | - Pauliina Hirvi
- Aalto University, Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, P.O. Box 12200, AALTO FI-00076, Finland; Aalto University, Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis, Finland
| | - Kalle Kotilahti
- Aalto University, Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, P.O. Box 12200, AALTO FI-00076, Finland; University of Turku, Department of Clinical Medicine, Turku Brain and Mind Center, FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study, Finland
| | - Juha Heiskala
- HUS Medical Imaging Center, Clinical Neurophysiology; Clinical Neurosciences, Helsinki, University Hospital and University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Jetro J Tuulari
- University of Turku, Department of Clinical Medicine, Turku Brain and Mind Center, FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study, Finland; University of Turku and Turku University Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, Finland; Turku Collegium for Science, Medicine and Technology, TCSMT, University of Turku, Finland
| | - Linnea Karlsson
- University of Turku, Department of Clinical Medicine, Turku Brain and Mind Center, FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study, Finland; University of Turku and Turku University Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, Finland; University of Turku and Turku University Hospital, Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Finland; Centre for Population Health Research, Turku University Hospital and University of Turku, Turku, Finland
| | - Hasse Karlsson
- University of Turku, Department of Clinical Medicine, Turku Brain and Mind Center, FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study, Finland; University of Turku and Turku University Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, Finland
| | - Ilkka Nissilä
- Aalto University, Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, P.O. Box 12200, AALTO FI-00076, Finland.
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Jaffe-Dax S, Bermano AH, Erel Y, Emberson LL. Video-based motion-resilient reconstruction of three-dimensional position for functional near-infrared spectroscopy and electroencephalography head mounted probes. NEUROPHOTONICS 2020; 7:035001. [PMID: 32704521 PMCID: PMC7370942 DOI: 10.1117/1.nph.7.3.035001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/06/2020] [Accepted: 07/06/2020] [Indexed: 05/06/2023]
Abstract
Significance: We propose a video-based, motion-resilient, and fast method for estimating the position of optodes on the scalp. Aim: Measuring the exact placement of probes (e.g., electrodes and optodes) on a participant's head is a notoriously difficult step in acquiring neuroimaging data from methods that rely on scalp recordings (e.g., electroencephalography and functional near-infrared spectroscopy) and is particularly difficult for any clinical or developmental population. Existing methods of head measurements require the participant to remain still for a lengthy period of time, are laborious, and require extensive training. Therefore, a fast and motion-resilient method is required for estimating the scalp location of probes. Approach: We propose an innovative video-based method for estimating the probes' positions relative to the participant's head, which is fast, motion-resilient, and automatic. Our method builds on capitalizing the advantages and understanding the limitations of cutting-edge computer vision and machine learning tools. We validate our method on 10 adult subjects and provide proof of feasibility with infant subjects. Results: We show that our method is both reliable and valid compared to existing state-of-the-art methods by estimating probe positions in a single measurement and by tracking their translation and consistency across sessions. Finally, we show that our automatic method is able to estimate the position of probes on an infant head without lengthy offline procedures, a task that has been considered challenging until now. Conclusions: Our proposed method allows, for the first time, the use of automated spatial co-registration methods on developmental and clinical populations, where lengthy, motion-sensitive measurement methods routinely fail.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sagi Jaffe-Dax
- Princeton University, Psychology Department, Princeton, New Jersey, United States
| | - Amit H. Bermano
- Princeton University, Computer Science Department, Princeton, New Jersey, United States
- Tel-Aviv University, School of Computer Science, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Yotam Erel
- Tel-Aviv University, School of Computer Science, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Lauren L. Emberson
- Princeton University, Psychology Department, Princeton, New Jersey, United States
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Dravida S, Noah JA, Zhang X, Hirsch J. Joint Attention During Live Person-to-Person Contact Activates rTPJ, Including a Sub-Component Associated With Spontaneous Eye-to-Eye Contact. Front Hum Neurosci 2020; 14:201. [PMID: 32581746 PMCID: PMC7283505 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.00201] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/26/2019] [Accepted: 05/05/2020] [Indexed: 12/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Eye-to-eye contact is a spontaneous behavior between interacting partners that occurs naturally during social interactions. However, individuals differ with respect to eye gaze behaviors such as frequency of eye-to-eye contacts, and these variations may reflect underlying differences in social behavior in the population. While the use of eye signaling to indicate a shared object of attention in joint attention tasks has been well-studied, the effects of the natural variation in establishing eye contact during joint attention have not been isolated. Here, we investigate this question using a novel two-person joint attention task. Participants were not instructed regarding the use of eye contacts; thus all mutual eye contact events between interacting partners that occurred during the joint attention task were spontaneous and varied with respect to frequency. We predicted that joint attention systems would be modulated by differences in the social behavior across participant pairs, which could be measured by the frequency of eye contact behavior. We used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning and eye-tracking to measure the neural signals associated with joint attention in interacting dyads and to record the number of eye contact events between them. Participants engaged in a social joint attention task in which real partners used eye gaze to direct each other's attention to specific targets. Findings were compared to a non-social joint attention task in which an LED cue directed both partners' attention to the same target. The social joint attention condition showed greater activity in right temporoparietal junction than the non-social condition, replicating prior joint attention results. Eye-contact frequency modulated the joint attention activity, revealing bilateral activity in social and high level visual areas associated with partners who made more eye contact. Additionally, when the number of mutual eye contact events was used to classify each pair as either "high eye contact" or "low eye contact" dyads, cross-brain coherence analysis revealed greater coherence between high eye contact dyads than low eye contact dyads in these same areas. Together, findings suggest that variation in social behavior as measured by eye contact modulates activity in a subunit of the network associated with joint attention.
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Affiliation(s)
- Swethasri Dravida
- Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States
| | - J. Adam Noah
- Brain Function Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States
| | - Xian Zhang
- Brain Function Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States
| | - Joy Hirsch
- Brain Function Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States
- Department of Neuroscience, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States
- Department of Comparative Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States
- Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London, United Kingdom
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Doulgerakis M, Eggebrecht AT, Dehghani H. High-density functional diffuse optical tomography based on frequency-domain measurements improves image quality and spatial resolution. NEUROPHOTONICS 2019; 6:035007. [PMID: 31482102 PMCID: PMC6702521 DOI: 10.1117/1.nph.6.3.035007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/09/2019] [Accepted: 07/30/2019] [Indexed: 05/18/2023]
Abstract
Measurements of dynamic near-infrared (NIR) light attenuation across the human head together with model-based image reconstruction algorithms allow the recovery of three-dimensional spatial brain activation maps. Previous studies using high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT) systems have reported improved image quality over sparse arrays. These HD-DOT systems incorporated multidistance overlapping continuous wave measurements that only recover differential intensity attenuation. We investigate the potential improvement in reconstructed image quality due to the additional incorporation of phase shift measurements, which reflect the time-of-flight of the measured NIR light, within the tomographic reconstruction from high-density measurements. To evaluate image reconstruction with and without the additional phase information, we simulated point spread functions across a whole-scalp field of view in 24 subject-specific anatomical models using an experimentally derived noise model. The addition of phase information improves the image quality by reducing localization error by up to 59% and effective resolution by up to 21% as compared to using the intensity attenuation measurements alone. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the phase data enable images to be resolved at deeper brain regions where intensity data fail, which is further supported by utilizing experimental data from a single subject measurement during a retinotopic experiment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthaios Doulgerakis
- University of Birmingham, School of Computer Science, Birmingham, England, United Kingdom
| | - Adam T. Eggebrecht
- Washington University School of Medicine, Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, St. Louis, Missouri, United States
| | - Hamid Dehghani
- University of Birmingham, School of Computer Science, Birmingham, England, United Kingdom
- Address all correspondence to Hamid Dehghani, E-mail:
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Wheelock MD, Culver JP, Eggebrecht AT. High-density diffuse optical tomography for imaging human brain function. THE REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS 2019; 90:051101. [PMID: 31153254 PMCID: PMC6533110 DOI: 10.1063/1.5086809] [Citation(s) in RCA: 64] [Impact Index Per Article: 12.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/23/2018] [Accepted: 04/14/2019] [Indexed: 05/08/2023]
Abstract
This review describes the unique opportunities and challenges for noninvasive optical mapping of human brain function. Diffuse optical methods offer safe, portable, and radiation free alternatives to traditional technologies like positron emission tomography or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Recent developments in high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT) have demonstrated capabilities for mapping human cortical brain function over an extended field of view with image quality approaching that of fMRI. In this review, we cover fundamental principles of the diffusion of near infrared light in biological tissue. We discuss the challenges involved in the HD-DOT system design and implementation that must be overcome to acquire the signal-to-noise necessary to measure and locate brain function at the depth of the cortex. We discuss strategies for validation of the sensitivity, specificity, and reliability of HD-DOT acquired maps of cortical brain function. We then provide a brief overview of some clinical applications of HD-DOT. Though diffuse optical measurements of neurophysiology have existed for several decades, tremendous opportunity remains to advance optical imaging of brain function to address a crucial niche in basic and clinical neuroscience: that of bedside and minimally constrained high fidelity imaging of brain function.
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Affiliation(s)
- Muriah D. Wheelock
- Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110, USA
| | | | - Adam T. Eggebrecht
- Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110, USA
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