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IScience Jun 2020Optical microscope is one of the most widely used imaging tools for its great flexibility, reliable design, and low cost. Optical microsphere nanoscope (OMN) is invented... (Review)
Review
Optical microscope is one of the most widely used imaging tools for its great flexibility, reliable design, and low cost. Optical microsphere nanoscope (OMN) is invented as a method that can greatly enhance the observation power of conventional optical microscopes. In this perspective, the promising outlook for this approach is briefly discussed. There exists a great freedom to apply this method in various applications. OMN has been successfully commercialized. Our past experience and strategies are summarized in this perspective, which serves as a good reference for the future technology entrepreneurs. Based on our story and model, the factors for success are listed. It can be used to evaluate other commercialization projects and find out the directions that require further improvement.
PubMed: 32534443
DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2020.101211 -
BMJ Open Ophthalmology Jun 2023To compare subjective levels of comfort and visual experiences related to microscope light in patients undergoing their first cataract surgery with topical anaesthesia... (Randomized Controlled Trial)
Randomized Controlled Trial
Comparing microscope light-associated glare and comfort between heads-up 3D digital and conventional microscopes in cataract surgery: a randomised, multicentre, single-blind, controlled trial.
OBJECTIVE
To compare subjective levels of comfort and visual experiences related to microscope light in patients undergoing their first cataract surgery with topical anaesthesia using a digital microscope (the NGENUITY three-dimensional (3D) visualisation system) or a conventional microscope.
METHODS AND ANALYSIS
A prospective, randomised, single-blinded, parallel-group, multicentre, interventional study. Patients (n=128) were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups: the experimental group (n=63) had surgery using the digital microscope and the control group (n=65) had surgery with a conventional microscope. The primary outcome was patients' subjective experience of glare from the microscope light during surgery on a numerical scale from 0 to 10. Key secondary outcomes were patients' subjective levels of comfort and visual experiences related to the microscope light.
RESULTS
The experimental group reported significantly lower levels of glare; median levels were 1.0 (0.0-4.0) for the experimental group vs 3.0 (0.0-6.0) for the control group (p=0.027). They also reported higher levels of comfort; median ratings were 8.0 (6.5-10.0) in the experimental group and 7.0 (5.0-9.0) in controls (p=0.026). There were no group differences in ratings of subjective pain or visual disturbances. Median microscope light intensity was lower in the experimental group than controls; 3425.0 (2296.0-4300.0) Lux vs 24 279.0 (16 000.0-26 500.0) Lux (p<0.0001), respectively.
CONCLUSION
Compared with conventional microscopes, the NGENUITY 3D visualisation system allows surgeons to operate with lower levels of light exposure, resulting in significantly less glare and improved comfort in patients undergoing cataract surgery.
TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER
NCT05085314.
Topics: Humans; Prospective Studies; Glare; Single-Blind Method; Cataract Extraction; Cataract
PubMed: 37493673
DOI: 10.1136/bmjophth-2023-001272 -
Microscopy Research and Technique Jul 2024The outbreak of COVID-19 exposed the inadequacy of our technical tools for home health surveillance, and recent studies have shown the potential of smartphones as a...
The outbreak of COVID-19 exposed the inadequacy of our technical tools for home health surveillance, and recent studies have shown the potential of smartphones as a universal optical microscopic imaging platform for such applications. However, most of them use laboratory-grade optomechanical components and transmitted illuminations to ensure focus tuning capability and imaging quality, which keeps the cost of the equipment high. Here, we propose an ultra-low-cost solution for smartphone microscopy. To realize focus tunability, we designed a seesaw-like structure capable of converting large displacements on one side into small displacements on the other (reduced to ∼9.1%), which leverages the intrinsic flexibility of 3D printing materials. We achieved a focus-tuning accuracy of ∼5 𝜇m, which is 40 times higher than the machining accuracy of the 3D-printed lens holder itself. For microscopic imaging, we used an off-the-shelf smartphone camera lens as the objective and the built-in flashlight as the illumination. To compensate for the resulting image quality degradation, we developed a learning-based image enhancement method. We used the CycleGAN architecture to establish the mapping from smartphone microscope images to benchtop microscope images without pairing. We verified the imaging performance on different biomedical samples. Except for the smartphone, we kept the full costs of the device under 4 USD. We think these efforts to lower the costs of smartphone microscopes will benefit their applications in various scenarios, such as point-of-care testing, on-site diagnosis, and home health surveillance. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We propose a solution for ultra-low-cost smartphone microscopy. Utilizing the flexibility of 3D-printed material, we can achieve focusing accuracy of ∼5 𝜇m. Such a low-cost device will benefit point-of-care diagnosis and home health surveillance.
Topics: Smartphone; Microscopy; Humans; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Printing, Three-Dimensional; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
PubMed: 38419399
DOI: 10.1002/jemt.24535 -
Biomedical Optics Express Dec 2020Phase imaging microscopy with incoherent object illumination is convenient and affordable for biomedical research and clinics since it provides easy integration with a...
Phase imaging microscopy with incoherent object illumination is convenient and affordable for biomedical research and clinics since it provides easy integration with a variety of bright-field optical microscopes. We report the design of a new hyperspectral imaging system based on a combination of a spatial light modulator (SLM) and an acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) for phase imaging microscopy. Contrast of phase-only objects originates from matched spectral and spatial filtering performed by the SLM and the AOTF located in Fourier-conjugate optical planes in the back-end of the optical system. The system is designed as an add-on to a standard optical microscope with incoherent diascopic sample illumination.
PubMed: 33408979
DOI: 10.1364/BOE.406155 -
Medicine and Pharmacy Reports Jul 2023An increased number of clinicians are using magnification to facilitate their vision when carrying out dental examinations and treatments. The best instrument for this... (Review)
Review
An increased number of clinicians are using magnification to facilitate their vision when carrying out dental examinations and treatments. The best instrument for this purpose is the microscope, which has proven to enhance quality, longevity and outcome of clinical work. Its use in some dental specialties (such as endodontics) is now well established, but there is also a role for this equipment in other branches of dentistry. To anticipate the contribution of magnification to dentistry in general, recent research and experimental data on the importance of magnification devices will be considered, from the perspectives of optical issues, diagnosing methods and treatment options. It will be shown that, while the microscope is vital to certain specialties (such as endodontics, periodontics, restorative dentistry and prosthodontics), it has little effect on others (orthodontics, for example). This synthesis of current researchattempts to shed light on the optimal magnification used in certain clinical situations, the distinctive benefits of loupes and microscopes for each dental branch, as well as their drawbacks.
PubMed: 37577013
DOI: 10.15386/mpr-2556 -
Indian Journal of Dermatology 2022Karl Gustav Theodor Simon is considered as the founder of dermatopathology, because for the first time in modern times he beds the bases of the microscopical examination...
Karl Gustav Theodor Simon is considered as the founder of dermatopathology, because for the first time in modern times he beds the bases of the microscopical examination of the cutaneous diseases. He worked in Berlin as a private physician, general practitioner, especially for the poor patients, continuing his research in pathology and focusing on the cutaneous diseases, in which the use of the microscope had a central role. During his medical career, he achieved to be acknowledged as one of the most important figures in the treatment of cutaneous diseases and to be included among the best dermatologists and venerologists at the time worldwide.
PubMed: 36998841
DOI: 10.4103/ijd.ijd_559_22 -
Computer Methods and Programs in... Oct 2023Due to the depth of focus (DOF) limitations of the optical systems of microscopes, it is often difficult to achieve full clarity from microscopic biomedical images under...
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
Due to the depth of focus (DOF) limitations of the optical systems of microscopes, it is often difficult to achieve full clarity from microscopic biomedical images under high-magnification microscopy. Multifocus microscopic biomedical image fusion (MFBIF) can effectively solve this problem. Considering both information richness and visual authenticity, this paper proposes a transformer network for MFBIF called TransFusion-Net.
METHODS
TransFusion-Net consists of two modules. One module is an interlayer cross-attention module, which is used to obtain feature mappings under the long-range dependencies observed among multiple nonfocus source images. The other module is a spatial attention upsampling network (SAU-Net) module, which is used to obtain global semantic information after further spatial attention is applied. Thus, TransFusion-Net can simultaneously receive multiple input images from a nonfull-focus microscope and make full use of the strong correlations between the source images to output accurate fusion results in an end-to-end manner.
RESULTS
The fusion results were quantitatively and qualitatively compared with those of eight state-of-the-art algorithms. In the quantitative experiments, five evaluation metrics, Q, Q, Q, Q, and PSNR, were used to evaluate the performance of each method, and the proposed method achieved values of 0.6574, 8.4572, 5.6305, 0.7341, and 89.5685, respectively, which are higher than those of the current state-of-the-art algorithms. In the qualitative experiments, a differential image was used for further validation, and the near-zero residuals visually verified the adequacy of the proposed method for fusion. Furthermore, we showed some fusion results of multifocused biomedical microscopy images to verify the reliability of the proposed method, which shows high-quality fusion results.
CONCLUSION
Multifocus biomedical microscopic image fusion can be accurately and effectively achieved by devising a deep convolutional neural network with joint cross-attention and spatial attention mechanisms.
Topics: Reproducibility of Results; Algorithms; Benchmarking; Electric Power Supplies; Microscopy; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
PubMed: 37487310
DOI: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2023.107688 -
Small Methods Jan 2023Globally new pandemic diseases induce urgent demands for portable diagnostic systems to prevent and control infectious diseases. Smartphone-based portable diagnostic... (Review)
Review
Globally new pandemic diseases induce urgent demands for portable diagnostic systems to prevent and control infectious diseases. Smartphone-based portable diagnostic devices are significantly efficient tools to user-friendly connect personalized health conditions and collect valuable optical information for rapid diagnosis and biomedical research through at-home screening. Deep learning algorithms for portable microscopes also help to enhance diagnostic accuracy by reducing the imaging resolution gap between benchtop and portable microscopes. This review highlighted recent progress and continued efforts in a smartphone-tethered optical platform through portable, automated, and deep-learning-enabled microscopy for personalized diagnostics and remote monitoring. In detail, the optical platforms through smartphone-based microscopes and lens-free holographic microscopy are introduced, and deep learning-based portable microscopic imaging is explained to improve the image resolution and accuracy of diagnostics. The challenges and prospects of portable optical systems with microfluidic channels and a compact microscope to screen COVID-19 in the current pandemic are also discussed. It has been believed that this review offers a novel guide for rapid diagnosis, biomedical imaging, and digital healthcare with low cost and portability.
Topics: Humans; Microscopy; Deep Learning; Smartphone; COVID-19; Lenses
PubMed: 36420919
DOI: 10.1002/smtd.202200979 -
Methods in Cell Biology 2021Mitophagy is an evolutionally conserved cellular process that eliminates dysfunctional and excess mitochondria, thereby facilitating mitochondrial quality control and...
Mitophagy is an evolutionally conserved cellular process that eliminates dysfunctional and excess mitochondria, thereby facilitating mitochondrial quality control and metabolic recycling. In addition, mitophagy is essential for cellular homeostasis and tissue development, and mitophagic dysfunction is related to various pathologies including neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. Thus, accurate quantitative measurement of mitophagy is one of the hot topics in the field of mitochondrial research. Fluorescence microscopical technology, one of the most widely used technologies at present, can well explain the occurrence and activity of mitophagy. Here, we introduce in detail an experimental method for the immunofluorescence-based quantitativ determination of mitophagy, which not only servers the in-depth study of mitochondrial homeostasis regulation, but also allows for the analyzing mitochondrial autophagy pathologies such as aging, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer.
Topics: Autophagy; Fluorescence; Homeostasis; Mitochondria; Mitophagy
PubMed: 34225910
DOI: 10.1016/bs.mcb.2020.12.006 -
Microscopy Research and Technique Oct 2022This article presents a review after an exhaustive search that yielded 23 works carried out in the last decade for the availability of optical microscopes with open... (Review)
Review
This article presents a review after an exhaustive search that yielded 23 works carried out in the last decade for the availability of optical microscopes with open hardware as a low-cost alternative to commercial systems. These works were developed with the aim of covering needs within several areas such as: Bio Sciences research in institutions with limited resources, diagnosis of diseases and health screenings in large populations in developing countries, and training in educational contexts with a need for high availability of equipment and low replacement cost. The analysis of the selected works allows us to classify the analyzed solutions into two main categories, for which their essential characteristics are enumerated: portable field microscopes and multipurpose automated microscopes. Moreover, this work includes a discussion on the degree of maturity of the solutions in terms of the adoption of practices aligned with the development of Open Science. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Concise review on low-cost microscopes for developing Open Science, exposing the role of smartphone-based microscopy. The work classifies microscopes in two main categories: (1) portable field microscopes, and (2) multipurpose automated microscopes.
Topics: Microscopy; Smartphone
PubMed: 35879870
DOI: 10.1002/jemt.24200