Reproducibility of fNIRS Within Subject for Visual and Motor Tasks

Authors

• Julie C. Wagner, Marquette University
• Anthony Zinos, Marquette University
• Scott A. Beardsley, Marquette UniversityFollow
• Wei-Liang Chen, George Washington University
• Lisa Conant, Medical College of Wisconsin
• Marsha Malloy, Medical College of Wisconsin
• Joseph Heffernan, Medical College of Wisconsin
• Brendan Quirk, Medical College of Wisconsin
• Robert W. Prost, Medical College of Wisconsin
• Mohit Maheshwari, Children's Wisconsin
• Jeffrey Sugar, Medical College of Wisconsin
• Harry T. Whelan, Medical College of Wisconsin

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-2025

Publisher

Elsevier

Source Publication

NeuroImage

Source ISSN

1053-8119

Original Item ID

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2025.121492

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.

Comments

Accepted version. NeuroImage, Vol. 321 (November 2025): 121492. DOI. © 2025 The Authors, published by Elsevier Inc., Used with permission.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Wagner, Julie C.; Zinos, Anthony; Beardsley, Scott A.; Chen, Wei-Liang; Conant, Lisa; Malloy, Marsha; Heffernan, Joseph; Quirk, Brendan; Prost, Robert W.; Maheshwari, Mohit; Sugar, Jeffrey; and Whelan, Harry T., "Reproducibility of fNIRS Within Subject for Visual and Motor Tasks" (2025). Biomedical Sciences Faculty Research and Publications. 273.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/biomedsci_fac/273