# A Wearable Optical Imaging System for Daily Monitoring of Prefrontal Activity in ADHD

> **NIH NIH R21** · STANFORD UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $443,080

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Over the past decade, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has invested several billion dollars for
large-scale, multi-site, functional MRI (fMRI) cohort studies in pursuit of brain markers for mental illness, yet
clinical translation of fMRI for diagnosis of mental illness is plagued with many challenges. Chief among them
is the lack of reproducibility of findings at the individual level due to the suboptimal measurement reliability of
short-quantity (<10 min) fMRI recordings. Research suggests that collecting hours – not minutes – of data per
individual patient may be needed to fulfill the clinical promise of functional neuroimaging, but issues of cost,
compliance and the ecological validity of tested paradigms render such fMRI studies impractical in patients
with psychiatric conditions and contribute to the huge gap in the clinical utility of imaging technologies for
mental health. To bridge the gap in translation of functional neuroimaging in clinical neuropsychiatry, we
propose to optimize, test and validate a wearable imaging system based on functional near infrared
spectroscopy (fNIRS) that is low-cost, accessible, reliable, and can be used at home for collecting highly-
sampled brain activity in patients with mental illness, using the prefrontal activity of children with Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as a model illness to test the feasibility of this innovative paradigm.
Compared with fMRI, fNIRS is inexpensive, portable, and more tolerant to subject movement, allowing for
measurement of brain activity in naturalistic situations. Our central hypothesis is that collecting highly-sampled
individual data will allow us to detect patterns of brain activity that can be reliably replicated at the individual
level and that predict behavioral and clinical symptoms. A wealth of fMRI and fNIRS data already demonstrate
(a) consistent hypoactivation in the prefrontal circuit in ADHD during executive functioning tasks and (b)
association between hypoactivity in the prefrontal circuit in ADHD and behavioral and clinical symptoms. We
will collect highly-sampled fNIRS data on the prefrontal activity of 30 children with ADHD and 30 typically
developing controls. Data will be collected daily over three weeks while subjects are at rest and/or performing
cognitive tasks on a smart-phone. Our interdisciplinary, multi-institutional team has already developed a very
low-cost (<$100) prototype wearable, wireless fNIRS system for monitoring activity of the prefrontal cortex that
we will refine (Aim 1) and deploy (Aim 2) through this proposal. Aim 1: Optimize a prototype wearable,
wireless, multi-channel, smart-phone operated optical imaging system for regular monitoring of prefrontal
activity at home. Aim 2: Test and validate the proposed system for reliable monitoring of prefrontal activity in
children with ADHD. Successful completion of this first-of-a-kind study will help shift the current paradigm away
from in-lab, s...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10043220
- **Project number:** 1R21MH123873-01
- **Recipient organization:** STANFORD UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Audrey Kynsella Bowden
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $443,080
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-07-01 → 2023-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10043220

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10043220, A Wearable Optical Imaging System for Daily Monitoring of Prefrontal Activity in ADHD (1R21MH123873-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10043220. Licensed CC0.

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