Principles and Applications of Diffuse Optical Imaging for the Brain

Diffuse optical imaging (DOI) of the brain has emerged as a new neuroimaging technique that is seeing growing applications in brain research. The technique's simplicity, lower cost and applicability to children have contributed to its popularity. However, the translation of DOI to clinically relevant scenarios has lagged. Poor quantification of local hemodynamic changes based on optical signals remains a major hurdle and significant efforts are still being pursued to better understand how to recover accurate images of functional activation and generate statistical maps, and to identify the limitations of DOI. This paper reviews the underlying principles of brain DOI and applications that may find a niche in the clinic.