Raul Fernandez Rojas¹, Xu Huang¹, Keng Liang Ou² and Jehu Lopez-Aparicio³, ¹University of Canberra, Australia, ²Taipei Medical University, Taiwan and ³National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico

In this paper we present the use of a signal processing technique to find dominant channels in near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Cross correlation is computed to compare measuring channels and identify delays among the channels. In addition, visual inspection was used to detect potential dominant channels. The results showed that the visual analysis exposed painrelated activations in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) after stimulation which is consistent with similar studies and the cross correlation analysis found dominant channels on both cerebral hemispheres. The analysis also showed a relationship between dominant channels and neighbouring channels. Therefore, our results present a new method to detect dominant regions in the cerebral cortex using near-infrared spectroscopy. These results have also implications in the reduction of number of channels by eliminating irrelevant channels for the experiment.

Signal processing, functional response, time dependant, medical imaging analysis, fNIRS.