Imagine a person wearing a Brite and playing a demanding video game. This video game is difficult, and the mental workload is increasing drastically. Changes in blood volume, or hemodynamic changes, which are associated with the increase in workload is registered using the Brite. This blog will expand on how a NIRS-based BCI works and what researchers have made possible using NIRS-based BCI.

We like to incorporate the user from the very first beginning in our development process. Talking with researchers and clinicians, we get to know what’s driving them and what their expectations and suggestions are for our devices. We are constantly trying to understand their feelings and see the world from their perspective to optimize our NIRS devices. One way of doing this is observing and questioning the user that is working with the device, and subject that is wearing the NIRS device. This way, we are trying to gain new insights for existing and future NIRS products.

Short separation channels are the new trend in fNIRS. However, what is the functionality of such a short separation channel in brain oxygenation research?

A special thanks to our customers who published so many articles with our (f)NIRS devices and we hope you will keep on publishing in the future!

The Sophia Bus was an idea pitched by researchers from the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology within Erasmus MC-Sophia Children’s Hospital. As a national expertise center for many rare neurodevelopmental syndromes, children all over the Netherlands need to travel all the way to Rotterdam frequently to participate in research studies. The Sophia bus minimizes the burden for these patients by offering the solution to this problem: a mobile research lab that carries researchers to the patients’ doorstep.

fNIRS, as a neuroimaging method, was introduced more than two decades ago. Innovation in equipment, tools, and methods based on related-neuroimaging methods is increasing thanks to several companies and academic laboratories. The use of fNIRS in future research practices will aid in advancing modern investigations of human brain function. Connectivity measures will contribute to the field of neuroscience and a multimodal imaging approach is likely required.

Thanks to the very generous gifts of local companies and private individuals during the ‘Lichtjesactie’ (translates as ‘Candles project’) that was organized during Christmas time last year by the Stichting Vrienden van Sophia, the Sophia Childrens hospital were able to buy a camper van, which has been remodeled and transformed into a mobile research lab under close guidance of dr. Sabine Mous.

Watch how easy setting up your Brite is!

The Brite is the only wearable fNIRS device worldwide that can measure the oxy-, deoxy- and total hemoglobin in every part of the head, e.g. prefrontal cortex, motor cortex, or visual cortex.

The artificial induction of ischemia (from Greek, meaning stopping/keeping back blood) was first shown to help protect cardiac muscle from injury in later occurring episodes of ischemia by Charles Murry and colleagues in 1986[1]. This technique came to be called ischemic preconditioning (IPC).

A common question we get from our customers is what is a baseline and how to use it. Generally with fNIRS, the absolute values are arbitrary. The period before a stimulus is often referred to as the baseline. In this blog we will describe the do's and don'ts of baselines.

At Artinis we consider ultimate success to be good publications by our customers. To see how we are doing we have systematically searched Google Scholar for NIRS and fNIRS publications.

An insight guide into NIRS head-cap development by our designer Wout Kregting

How do we know that the most active channels are located over the brain region of interest and not somewhere else? Of course, an experienced researcher just knows where to place the optodes, but is that enough to convince a potential highly-critical reviewer or fellow scientist?

Auditory cortex measurement with fNIRS. 

Underwater NIRS - Muscle Oxygenation changes measured with the Russian and Spanish Olympic synchronised swimming team.

Dr. Marc van Wanrooij and his team from the Hearing and Implants lab used a 48-channel OxyMon to study temporal cortical activation as represented by concentration changes of oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin in 48, easy-to-apply optical fNIRS channels. 

Last week Artinis was present at the 2016 2f-NIRS conference in Montpellier, France. This two-day conference, titled NIRS signal: from acquisition to analysis, provided us with a great platform to give a mirror game workshop with two OctaMon devices.