Described herein are systems and methods for noninvasive functional brain imaging using low-coherence interferometry (e.g., for the purpose of creating a brain computer interface with higher spatiotemporal resolution). One variation of a system and method comprises optical interference components and techniques using a lock-in camera. The system comprises a light source and a processor configured to rapidly phase-shift the reference light beam across a pre-selected set of phase shifts or offsets, to store a set of interference patterns associated with each of these pre-selected phase shifts, and to process these stored interference patterns to compute an estimate of the number of photons traveling between a light source and the lock-in camera detector for which the path length falls within a user-defined path length range.