Characterization of beta-lactam antibiotic-induced vancomycin-resistant MRSA (BIVR) in a patient with septicemia during long-term vancomycin administration.

It was reported that some methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) show resistance to vancomycin (VCM) and beta-lactam antibiotics; thus, they are termed beta-lactam antibiotic-induced VCM-resistant MRSA (BIVR). The VCM resistance of MRSA is induced by the administration of beta-lactam antibiotics, but this phenomenon can be difficult to detect in the clinical laboratory. We detected the BIVR strain in a 64-year-old man who had had a ventilator tube inserted directly into the windpipe during long-term VCM therapy.

Optimized free-form phase mask for extension of depth of field in wavefront-coded imaging.

To achieve a further extension of the depth of field in wavefront-coded imaging by reducing the impact of focus error in the optical transfer function, we propose the use of a free-form phase mask (FPM) instead of a conventional cubic phase mask (CPM). We optimized the shape of the FPM using the simulated annealing algorithm and confirmed that the optimized FPM provides a much larger focal tolerance and better final images than the CPM in the noise-free case.