Characterization of autism spectrum disorder with spontaneous hemodynamic activity

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to investigate spontaneous hemodynamic activity in the temporal cortex for typically developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Forty-seven children participated in the experiments including twenty-five with ASD. Compared with TD children, children with ASD showed weaker bilateral resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC), but much stronger fluctuation magnitude in terms of oxy-hemoglobin (HbO₂) and deoxy-hemoglobin (Hb). Differentiating between ASD and TD based on a support vector machine (SVM) model including bilateral RSFC and the fluctuation power of HbO₂ and Hb as variables could achieve high accurate classification with sensitivity of 81.6% and specificity of 94.6%. This study demonstrates optical brain imaging has the potential for screening children with risk of ASD.