Publications by authors named "Naveen K Balla"

Studying the structural dynamics of lipid membranes requires methods that can address both microscopic and macroscopic characteristics. Fluorescence imaging is part of the most used techniques to study membrane properties in various systems from artificial membranes to cells: It benefits from a high sensitivity to local properties such as polarity and molecular orientational order, with a high spatial resolution down to the single-molecule level. The influence of embedded fluorescent lipid probes on the lipid membrane molecules is however poorly known and relies most often on molecular dynamics simulations, due to the challenges faced by experimental approaches to address the molecular-scale dimension of this question.

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Wavefront shaping is a powerful method to refocus light through a scattering medium. Its application to large spectral bandwidths or multiple wavelengths refocusing for nonlinear bio-imaging in-depth is however limited by spectral decorrelations. In this work, we demonstrate ways to access a large spectral memory of a refocus in thin scattering media and thick forward-scattering biological tissues.

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Myelin around axons is currently widely studied by structural analyses and large-scale imaging techniques, with the goal to decipher its critical role in neuronal protection. Although there is strong evidence that in myelin, lipid composition, and lipid membrane morphology are affected during the progression of neurodegenerative diseases, there is no quantitative method yet to report its ultrastructure in tissues at both molecular and macroscopic levels, in conditions potentially compatible with in vivo observations. In this work, we study and quantify the molecular order of lipids in myelin at subdiffraction scales, using label-free polarization-resolved coherent anti-Stokes Raman, which exploits coherent anti-Stokes Raman sensitivity to coupling between light polarization and oriented molecular vibrational bonds.

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Prematurity affects 11% of the births and is the main cause of infant mortality. On the opposite case, the failure of induction of parturition in the case of delayed spontaneous birth is associated with fetal suffering. Both conditions are associated with precocious and/or delayed cervical ripening.

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Dipole models are one of the simplest numerical models to understand nonlinear scattering. Existing dipole model for second harmonic generation, third harmonic generation and coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering assume that the dipoles which make up a scatterer do not interact with one another. Thus, this dipole model can be called the uncoupled dipole model.

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We extend a simple dipole approximation model to predict nonlinear scattering from small particles. This numerical method is known as Discrete Dipole Approximation (DDA) and has been extensively used to model linear scattering by small particles of various shapes and sizes. We show here that DDA can be used to efficiently model second harmonic scattering by small particles.

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