Rapid estimation of photon measurement density functions using a deep convolutional neural network for functional near-infrared spectroscopy

The photon measurement density function (PMDF) plays a fundamental role in both pre-experimental optode arrangement and post-experimental data analysis in functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Conventionally, PMDFs are derived from structural MR images through tissue segmentation and photon propagation modeling (PPM), which are computationally demanding and time-consuming, thereby limiting their practical use. In this study, we propose a novel deep learning–based framework to estimate PMDFs directly from MR images and channel configurations. The proposed method supports flexible source–detector distances and eliminates the need for explicit tissue segmentation and repeated photon simulations. Specifically, a convolutional neural network is trained to predict photon fluence distributions, from which PMDFs are subsequently derived using the adjoint formulation. The trained model is evaluated on channels placed in both trained and unseen scalp regions across commonly used source–detector distances. The results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves PMDF estimations comparable to those obtained from PPM. Overall, this approach significantly reduces computational cost and has the potential to facilitate broader adoption of PMDF-based methods in the fNIRS community.