A three-wavelength 240-channel NIRS-DOT system of lock-in photon-counting mode for brain functional investigation

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has received extensive attention in the field of brain functional investigation because of its noninvasiveness, safety and environmental adaptation. Nevertheless, this modality still demands an enhancement in the measurement reliability and the channel availability for broader applications and quantitative accomplishment. In this study we have developed a three-wavelength, 240-channel continuous-wave NIRS-DOT system of lock-in photoncounting mode. The system combines high-superiority of the lock-in detection in noise suppression and parallelism capability with ultra-high sensitivity of the photon-counting technology, and provides 20 source-fiber optodes connecting to their respective three-wavelength laser diode sets and 12 detection-fiber optodes connecting to their respective photoncounting photomultiplier-tubes. The light intensity can be automatically adjusted according to the custom configurations for an optimal operation. The system has been validated using a series of static and dynamic phantom experiments, demonstrating appealing performances in stability, linearity, anti-noise, inter-channel crosstalk and temporal resolution.

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