{"id":8646,"date":"2019-05-22T16:09:58","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/optical_imaging\/"},"modified":"2019-05-22T16:09:58","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:09:58","slug":"optical_imaging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/optical_imaging\/","title":{"rendered":"Optical imaging"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Broadly speaking, a technique for studying brain activity that involves measuring tiny changes in the scattering or bending and absorption of infrared light. &nbsp;The simplest and most widely used type of optical imaging is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.medicalnewstoday.com\/articles\/153737.php\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/www.medicalnewstoday.com\/articles\/153737.php&amp;target=_self\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">endoscopy<\/a>. &nbsp;As for brain imaging, diffuse optical imaging (DOI) is the most widely used of its type, and is also referred to as near-red optical spectroscopy (NIRS). &nbsp;A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/laser\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/laser&amp;target=_self\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">laser<\/a> using near-infrared light, it measures a hemodynamic response associated with neural activity in the brain. &nbsp;Put another way, via optical fiber bundles, it detects changes in blood flow by measuring the light absorption of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood in a a specific part of the brain, while the scattering of light reflects physiological processes such as the swelling of a neuron that occurs when it generates a signal. &nbsp;Optical imaging is a &#8216;close technical cousin&#8217; of functional magnetic imaging (fMRI). &nbsp;In contrast to optical imaging, fMRI detects blood flow changes through measuring the magnetic signal from deoxygenated blood. &nbsp;Compared to fMRI, DOI has a better temporal, but a poorer spatial, resolution (spatial resolution also being a limitation with EEG even more so than with optical imaging). &nbsp;Optical imaging, however offers a number of advantages over other brain-imaging techniques. &nbsp;To begin with, it is not subject to movement artefacts, a bonus when studying the <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.psych.northwestern.edu\/infantcognitionlab\/Proofs.pdf\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/groups.psych.northwestern.edu\/infantcognitionlab\/Proofs.pdf&amp;target=_self\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">brain activity of infants<\/a> and young children. &nbsp;Next, optical imaging uses non-ionizing radiation, which greatly reduces radiation effects in repeated recordings. &nbsp;Furthermore, it can be combined with a range of other imaging techniques. &nbsp;Finally, DOI is relatively cheap, portable and unaffected by electrical interference. &nbsp;For studying brain and other organ morphology, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ctr.at\/en\/r-d-technologies\/terahertz\/terahertz-tomography.html\" class=\"cc-route-enabled\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/www.ctr.at\/en\/r-d-technologies\/terahertz\/terahertz-tomography.html&amp;target=_self\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tetrahertz time-domain imaging<\/a> holds great promise as it can detect information unavailable to other optical imaging techniques.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"brain_-neuro--_imaging\">Brain (neuro-) imaging<\/a>, <a href=\"deoxyhemoglobin_-dhb-\">Deoxyhemoglobin (dHB)<\/a>, Electroencephalogram (EEG, <a href=\"functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging_-fmri-\">Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)<\/a>, Functional near-red spectroscopy (NIRS), <a href=\"hemoglobin\">Hemoglobin<\/a>, <a href=\"optical_tomography\">Optical tomography<\/a>, <a href=\"optical_topography\">Optical topography<\/a>, Oxyhemoglobin <\/p>\n<p><\/body><\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Broadly speaking, a technique for studying brain activity that involves measuring tiny changes in the scattering or bending and absorption of infrared light. &nbsp;The simplest and most widely used type of optical imaging is endoscopy. &nbsp;As for brain imaging, diffuse optical imaging (DOI) is the most widely used of its type, and is also referred &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/optical_imaging\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Optical imaging&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-8646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glossary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}