Welcome to MuscleNIRS

Muscle near infrared spectroscopy (mNIRS) has developed enormously since Frans Jöbsis first demonstrated in 1977 that near infrared light could be used to monitor oxygen-sensitive signals in living tissue.

Today there is a wide range of instruments and an equally wide range of ways in which NIRS is used to study muscle. This is a strength of the field, but it can also make it difficult to understand exactly what different instruments measure, how those measurements are obtained and, most importantly, what they tell us about muscle physiology.

I’ve been working with NIRS and oxygen metabolism for many years, and I’ve created MuscleNIRS as a place to discuss some of these questions.

The site has two main parts.

The Education section contains short introductions to the measurements that can be made with mNIRS and the methods used to make them. These are intended to be relatively permanent resources and will be expanded over time.

The Blog will be less formal and more topical. I plan to use it to discuss new papers that catch my attention, developments in NIRS technology and methodology, meetings and conferences, and questions or controversies within the field. I also hope occasionally to invite other researchers to contribute their perspectives.

This blog complements mNIRS.org, where information about meetings and other activities in the mNIRS community is maintained. Here, I hope to provide a more informal and regularly updated place to discuss what mNIRS can — and sometimes cannot — tell us.

As with the science itself, comments, corrections and disagreements are welcome. Suggestions for topics that could be added to the Education section are also very welcome.