FUZZY LOGIC AIDED ASSESSMENT OF THE LANGUAGE DOMINANCE USING NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY AND IMAGING

Abstract

Assessment of language dominance is one of important pre-treatments of brain surgery. The objective of this paper is to propose an estimation method of 'Laterality Index (LI)', which is a measure of language dominance, using near-infrared spectroscopy and imaging (NIRS/I) modality. The proposed method called fuzzy LI is a fuzzy-extension of the conventional estimation method (Watanabe et. al., Neuroscience Letters, 1998) called crisp LI. The benefit of our method is that the fuzzy degree belonging to language area for each measurement point is given, and that the language area is dynamically determined study by study using only NIRS/I. Experimental results on seven normal healthy right-handed volunteers showed that the fuzzy LI was correlated with one's handedness investigated by Edinburgh score at 77%.