Development of liquid biopsy in detection and screening of pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is a highly lethal malignant tumor, which has the characteristics of occult onset, low early diagnosis rate, rapid development and poor prognosis. The reason for the high mortality is partly that pancreatic cancer is usually found in the late stage and missed the best opportunity for surgical resection. As a promising detection technology, liquid biopsy has the advantages of non-invasive, real-time and repeatable.

Tunable single frequency Hz-magnitude narrow linewidth Brillouin fiber laser based on parity-time symmetry.

An Hz-magnitude ultra-narrow linewidth single-frequency Brillouin fiber laser (BFL) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The single frequency of the laser is selected by parity-time (PT) symmetry, which consists of a stimulated Brillouin scatter (SBS) gain path excited by a 24 km single-mode fiber (SMF) and an approximately equal length loss path tuned with a variable optical attenuator (VOA). These paths are coupled through a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) into a wavelength space.

Coherent high-spectral-resolution lidar for the measurement of the atmospheric Mie-Rayleigh-Brillouin backscatter spectrum.

In this study, a 1550 nm coherent high-spectral-resolution lidar (CHSRL) is developed to measure the optical properties of aerosols and atmospheric wind profiles in the atmospheric boundary layer. To determine the optical properties, a coherent frequency discriminator based on the fast Fourier transform is designed in the CHSRL to separate the Mie and the Rayleigh-Brillouin backscatter spectra to fulfill the needs of high-spectral measurements. The atmospheric wind velocity is retrieved using the simultaneously measured Doppler shift.

Modulating the Activity of Enzyme in Metal-Organic Frameworks Using the Photothermal Effect of TiC Nanosheets.

Enzymes are versatile catalysts with high potential in various applications, and much attention has been paid to the stability improvement of native enzymes and activity modulation. Encapsulation in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) as an efficient strategy for protecting fragile native enzymes while modulating the activity of enzymes remotely, which is practically demanded, has rarely been explored in MOF-encapsulated enzymes. Herein, TiC nanosheets exhibiting photothermal effect and biocompatibility were encapsulated in Cyt -embedded ZIF-8 to tailor the enzymatic activity remotely by near-infrared (NIR) irradiation for the first time.

Neutralization of Typhoid Toxin by Alpaca-Derived, Single-Domain Antibodies Targeting the PltB and CdtB Subunits.

Typhoid toxin is secreted by the typhoid fever-causing bacterial pathogen Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi and has tropism for immune cells and brain endothelial cells. Here, we generated a camelid single-domain antibody (VHH) library from typhoid toxoid-immunized alpacas and identified 41 VHHs selected on the glycan receptor-binding PltB and nuclease CdtB. VHHs exhibiting potent neutralizing activities from each sequence-based family were epitope binned via competition enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs), leading to 6 distinct VHHs, 2 anti-PltBs (T2E7 and T2G9), and 4 anti-CdtB VHHs (T4C4, T4C12, T4E5, and T4E8), whose neutralizing activities and associated toxin-neutralizing mechanisms were investigated.

Improved spatial-shifting two-wavelength algorithm for 3D shape measurement with a look-up table.

Conventional two-wavelength algorithms have been broadly used for three-dimensional shape measurement. However, the maximum unambiguous range of phase unwrapping depends on the least-common multiple of two wavelengths, and thus coprime wavelengths are commonly selected. The recently proposed spatial-shifting two-wavelength (SSTW) algorithm can achieve the maximum unambiguous range with two non-coprime wavelengths, but this algorithm tends to fail for some wavelength selections.

Absolute phase measurement with four patterns based on variant shifting phases.

Fringe projection profilometry has been proverbially utilized for measuring the shapes of objects. A common challenge in those systems is to accurately obtain a smooth absolute phase. Many new methods have been proposed to address this challenge.

Frequency-selective harmonic retrieval for Schottky mass spectrometry.

Nuclear mass measurements by means of Schottky mass spectrometry critically rely on an accurate determination of revolution frequencies of the circulating ions in a storage ring. Such a harmonic retrieval problem is conventionally tackled via the periodogram of the Schottky data, where the ion peaks are identified and their spectral locations are obtained by fittings. However, the discrete frequency grid of the periodogram has unfortunately hampered a fine resolution of two closely spaced harmonics.

Spatial binary coding method for stripe-wise phase unwrapping.

Binary coding methods have been widely used for phase unwrapping. However, traditional temporal binary coding methods require a sequence of binary patterns to encode the fringe order information. This paper presents a spatial binary coding (SBC) method that encodes the fringe order into only one binary pattern.

Depth range enhancement of binary defocusing technique based on multi-frequency phase merging.

Binary defocusing technique has demonstrated various merits for high-speed and high-accuracy three-dimensional measurement. However, the existence of excessive defocusing zone (EDZ) limits the depth range of binary defocusing system. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes a multi-frequency phase merging (MFPM) approach, which makes it possible to measure the object surface in large depth range (LDR).

Enhanced phase-coding method for three-dimensional shape measurement with half-period codeword.

The phase-coding method has been widely used for 3D shape measurement, which uses sinusoidal phase-shifting patterns to recover the wrapped phase and the stair phase-coding patterns to determine the fringe order. However, due to random noises and image blurring, the fringe order is always misaligned with the wrapped phase, which will lead to fringe order errors. This paper presents an enhanced phase-coding method to address this misalignment problem by using half-period codewords, in which each codeword is aligned to the half-period of the sinusoidal patterns.

Stereo calibration with absolute phase target.

Stereo cameras have been widely used for three-dimensional (3D) photogrammetry, and stereo calibration is a crucial process to estimate the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters. This paper proposes a stereo calibration method with absolute phase target by using horizontal and vertical phase-shifting fringes. The one-to-one mapping from the world points to the image points that can be recovered by referring to the absolute phase and then used to calibrate the stereo cameras.

Defocused camera calibration with a conventional periodic target based on Fourier transform.

State-of-art camera calibration methods always require sharp target images for accurate feature detection. This Letter presents a novel calibration method for a defocused camera with a conventional periodic target. Two crossed phase maps are recovered from the periodic target image by Fourier transform.

Modified Gray-Level Coding Method for Absolute Phase Retrieval.

Fringe projection systems have been widely applied in three-dimensional (3D) shape measurements. One of the important issues is how to retrieve the absolute phase. This paper presents a modified gray-level coding method for absolute phase retrieval.

Camera Calibration Robust to Defocus Using Phase-Shifting Patterns.

Camera parameters can't be estimated accurately using traditional calibration methods if the camera is substantially defocused. To tackle this problem, an improved approach based on three phase-shifting circular grating (PCG) arrays is proposed in this paper. Rather than encoding the feature points into the intensity, the proposed method encodes the feature points into the phase distribution, which can be recovered precisely using phase-shifting methods.

Quantized phase coding and connected region labeling for absolute phase retrieval.

This paper proposes an absolute phase retrieval method for complex object measurement based on quantized phase-coding and connected region labeling. A specific code sequence is embedded into quantized phase of three coded fringes. Connected regions of different codes are labeled and assigned with 3-digit-codes combining the current period and its neighbors.

Accurate feature detection for out-of-focus camera calibration.

For conventional camera calibration methods, well-focused images are necessary to detect features accurately. However, this requirement causes practical inconveniences to image acquisition for long- and short-distance photogrammetry. In this study, three active phase-shift circular grating (PCG) arrays are used as calibration patterns.

A Framework for Applying Point Clouds Grabbed by Multi-Beam LIDAR in Perceiving the Driving Environment.

The quick and accurate understanding of the ambient environment, which is composed of road curbs, vehicles, pedestrians, etc., is critical for developing intelligent vehicles. The road elements included in this work are road curbs and dynamic road obstacles that directly affect the drivable area.

Bi-soliton generation and its properties in stretched pulse fiber ring laser.

We studied the formation of bi-soliton pairs in Kerr-type stretched pulse fiber ring laser (SPFRL). By solving the modified Ginzburg-Landau (GL) equaition, which models the SPFRL, we show that anti-phase bi-soliton can be generated robustly if a low level Gaussian pulse is injected into the ring laser in the initial set-up stage. With the help of properly selected high order nonlinear gain coefficient, the observation of anti-phase bi-soliton pairs is expected to become feasible in experiments.

Determination of trace metallothioneins at nanomolar levels using phenanthroline-copper coordination by fluorescence spectra.

A direct fluorescence spectra method was applied for the determination of metallothioneins at nanomolar levels. In Britton-Robison (B-R) buffer (pH 7.0), the interaction of bis(1,10-phenanthroline)copper(II) complex cation [Cu(phen)2](2+) and metallothioneins enhanced the fluorescence intensity of system.