Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a growing neuroimaging modality, has been utilized over the past few decades to understand the neuronal behavior in the brain. The technique has been used to assess the brain hemodynamics of impaired cohorts as well as able-bodied. Neuroimaging is a critical technique for patients with impaired cognitive or motor behaviors. The portable nature of the fNIRS system is suitable for frequent monitoring of the patients who exhibit impaired brain activity. This study comprehensively reviews brain-impaired patients: The studies involving patient populations and the diseases discussed in more than 10 works are included. Eleven diseases examined in this paper include autism spectrum disorder, attentionde ficit hyperactivity disorder, epilepsy, depressive disorders, anxiety and panic disorder, schizophrenia, mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, stroke, and traumatic brain injury. For each disease, the tasks used for examination, fNIRS variables, and significant findings on the impairment are discussed. The channel configurations and the regions of interest are also outlined. Detecting the occurrence of symptoms at an earlier stage is vital for better rehabilitation and faster recovery. This paper illustrates the usability of fNIRS for early detection of impairment and the usefulness in monitoring the rehabilitation process. Finally, the limitations of the current fNIRS systems (i.e., nonexistence of a standard method and the lack of well-established features for classification) and future research directions are discussed. The authors hope that the findings in this paper would lead to advanced breakthrough discoveries in the fNIRS field in the future.

In this study, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is utilized to measure the hemodynamic responses (HRs) in the visual cortex of 14 subjects (aged 22–34 years) viewing the primary red, green, and blue (RGB) colors displayed on a white screen by a beam projector. The spatiotemporal characteristics of their oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobins (HbO and HbR) in the visual cortex are measured using a 15-source and 15-detector optode configuration. To see whether the activation maps upon RGB-color stimuli can be distinguished or not, the t-values of individual channels are averaged over 14 subjects. To find the best combination of two features for classification, the HRs of activated channels are averaged over nine trials. The HbO mean, peak, slope, skewness and kurtosis values during 2–7 s window for a given 10 s stimulation period are analyzed. Finally, the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) for classifying three classes is applied. Individually, the best classification accuracy obtained with slope-skewness features was 74.07% (Subject 1), whereas the best overall over 14 subjects was 55.29% with peak-skewness combination. Noting that the chance level of 3-class classification is 33.33%, it can be said that RGB colors can be distinguished. The overall results reveal that fNIRS can be used for monitoring purposes of the HR patterns in the human visual cortex.