Anthinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, Massachusetts 02129, USA. dboas@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu
We compare two geometries of sources and detectors for optimizing the diffuse optical imaging resolution of brain activation in humans. Because of limitations in the instruments' dynamic range, most diffuse optical brain activation images have used only nonoverlapping measurements. We demonstrate theoretically and with a human experiment that a simple geometry of sources and detectors can provide overlapping measurements within the limitation of instrumentation dynamic range and produce an image resolution and localization accuracy that is twofold better.