Convergent-beam attosecond x-ray crystallography.

Sub-ångström spatial resolution of electron density coupled with sub-femtosecond to few-femtosecond temporal resolution is required to directly observe the dynamics of the electronic structure of a molecule after photoinitiation or some other ultrafast perturbation, such as by soft X-rays. Meeting this challenge, pushing the field of quantum crystallography to attosecond timescales, would bring insights into how the electronic and nuclear degrees of freedom couple, enable the study of quantum coherences involved in molecular dynamics, and ultimately enable these dynamics to be controlled. Here, we propose to reach this realm by employing convergent-beam x-ray crystallography with high-power attosecond pulses from a hard-x-ray free-electron laser.

Non-Invasive Techniques of Nose to Brain Delivery Using Nanoparticulate Carriers: Hopes and Hurdles.

Intranasal drug delivery route has emerged as a promising non-invasive method of administering drugs directly to the brain, bypassing the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and blood-cerebrospinal fluid barriers (BCSF). BBB and BCSF prevent many therapeutic molecules from entering the brain. Intranasal drug delivery can transport drugs from the nasal mucosa to the brain, to treat a variety of Central nervous system (CNS) diseases.

3D reconstruction of unstained weakly scattering cells from a single defocused hologram.

We investigate the problem of 3D complex field reconstruction corresponding to unstained red blood cells (RBCs) with a single defocused off-axis digital hologram. The main challenge in this problem is the localization of cells to the correct axial range. While investigating the volume recovery problem for a continuous phase object like the RBC, we observe an interesting feature of the backpropagated field that it does not show a clear focusing effect.

Regularization-parameter-free optimization approach for image deconvolution.

Image deconvolution is often modeled as an optimization problem for a cost function involving two or more terms that represent the data fidelity and the image domain constraints (or penalties). While a number of choices for modeling the cost function and implementing the optimization algorithms exist, selection of the regularization parameter in the cost function usually involves empirical tuning, which is a tedious process. Any optimization framework provides a family of solutions, depending on the numerical value of the regularization parameter.

Complexity-guided Fourier phase retrieval from noisy data.

Reconstruction of a stable and good quality solution from noisy single-shot Fourier intensity data is a challenging problem for phase retrieval algorithms. We examine behavior of the solution provided by the hybrid input-output (HIO) algorithm for noisy data, from the perspective of the complexity guidance methodology that was introduced by us in an earlier paper [J. Opt.

Mean gradient descent: an optimization approach for single-shot interferogram analysis.

Complex object wave recovery from a single-shot interference pattern is an important practical problem in interferometry and digital holography. The most popular single-shot interferogram analysis method involves Fourier filtering of the cross term, but this method suffers from poor resolution. To obtain full pixel resolution, it is necessary to model the object wave recovery as an optimization problem.

Phase retrieval with complexity guidance.

Iterative phase retrieval methods based on the Gerchberg-Saxton (GS) or Fienup algorithm typically show stagnation artifacts even after a large number of iterations. We introduce a complexity parameter that can be computed directly from the Fourier magnitude data and provides a measure of fluctuations in the desired phase retrieval solution. It is observed that when initiated with a constant or a uniformly random phase map, the complexity of the Fienup solution containing stagnation artifacts stabilizes at a numerical value that is higher than .