By Sergio Novi

Last April, the Biomedical Optics Lab (LOB) at the University of Campinas (Prof. R. Mesquita, PI) held the second version of its 2-day fNIRS training course. The course was a success, attended by more than 20 researchers who were highly enthusiastic about learning material ranging from the basics to state-of-the-art issues in fNIRS.

The course started with a very interesting and exciting talk in which Prof. Mesquita explored the history of fNIRS, outlining the primary advances and pitfalls. The afternoon was devoted to guided hands-on use of functional protocols and exploration of several features of AtlasViewer.

In the second day, Sergio Novi and Edwin Forero discussed how to deal with motion artifacts and how to use short channels for eliminating extra cortical noise from fNIRS data. With guided exercises on analyzing the data that had been collected using HomER, participants had the opportunity to investigate the performance of several algorithms for removing motion artifacts and using different methods for regressing out extra cortical and systemic physiological noise. In the end, the participants had the opportunity to discuss their own ongoing projects and exchange ideas in an open conversation with Prof. Mesquita and our LOB team.