Automated Processing of fNIRS Data—A Visual Guide to the Pitfalls and Consequences

Abstract

With the rapid increase in new fNIRS users employing commercial software, there is a concern that many studies are biased by suboptimal processing methods. The purpose of this study is to provide a visual reference showing the effects of different processing methods, to help inform researchers in setting up and evaluating a processing pipeline. We show the significant impact of pre- and post-processing choices and stress again how important it is to combine data from both hemoglobin species in order to make accurate inferences about the activation site.

Keywords

• functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
• pre-processing
• post-processing
• channel exclusion
• motion correction
• LF de-noising
• GLM
• single subject