Test strips have been widely used in various rapid on-site biochemical sensing due to its simple and rapid detections. Unfortunately, many test strips only support qualitative sensing mainly because their detecting results are often determined by visual inspection. In order to solve the problem, we design a handheld fluorescence test strip reader, which can collect fluorescence emission from test strip thus quantify target under detection. The proposed handheld fluorescence test strip reader composes of rather compact optical system including a light emitting diode (LED) for excitation, an optical bandpass filter for fluorescence signal filtering and a smartphone for fluorescence signal collection and data analysis. All the optical elements are integrated using 3-D printed structures and coupled with the smartphone to support on-site detection. In addition, a smartphone application is also designed to automatically quantify fluorescence emission intensity, and it definitely can support quantitative target detection. Proved by a series of applications especially on rapid on-site detections, the handheld fluorescence test strip reader can detect target automatically, rapidly and accurately. Therefore, the proposed handheld fluorescence test strip reader is a potential tool for rapid on-site biochemical detection in various applications including agricultural, biomedical, and environmental fields.
KEYWORDS: Digital imaging, Live cell imaging, Digital image correlation, Numerical simulations, Real time imaging, Phase retrieval, Optical engineering, Image processing, Microscopy, Blood
Dual-view transport of intensity equation (TIE) method is an ideal way for quantitative live cell imaging as it has advantages such as real-time imaging, multimode observations, compact setup, and large field of view (FoV). However, due to the image recorder installation error, the inevitable FoV mismatch between the captured under- and over-focus intensities reduces the accuracy in both amplitude and phase retrievals. Here, to eliminate this undesired FoV mismatch, the phase correlation-based digital FoV correction is adopted to recognize and compensate the rotation, scale, and translation between the under- and over-focus images. Both the numerical simulations as well as the experiments in standard sample detection and quantitative live cell imaging prove that the digital FoV correction combined dual-view TIE method can maintain the consistence of the dual FoVs, thus guaranteeing the high-accurate amplitude and phase computations, proving the proposed method is a promising quantitative live cell imaging tool in various applications such as biological observations and medical diagnostics.
A variable aperture-based ptychographical iterative engine (vaPIE) is demonstrated both numerically and experimentally to reconstruct the sample phase and amplitude rapidly. By adjusting the size of a tiny aperture under the illumination of a parallel light beam to change the illumination on the sample step by step and recording the corresponding diffraction patterns sequentially, both the sample phase and amplitude can be faithfully reconstructed with a modified ptychographical iterative engine (PIE) algorithm. Since many fewer diffraction patterns are required than in common PIE and the shape, the size, and the position of the aperture need not to be known exactly, this proposed vaPIE method remarkably reduces the data acquisition time and makes PIE less dependent on the mechanical accuracy of the translation stage; therefore, the proposed technique can be potentially applied for various scientific researches.
As a lensfree imaging technique, ptychographic iterative engine (PIE) method can provide both quantitative sample amplitude and phase distributions avoiding aberration. However, it requires field of view (FoV) scanning often relying on mechanical translation, which not only slows down measuring speed, but also introduces mechanical errors decreasing both resolution and accuracy in retrieved information. In order to achieve high-accurate quantitative imaging with fast speed, digital micromirror device (DMD) is adopted in PIE for large FoV scanning controlled by on/off state coding by DMD. Measurements were implemented using biological samples as well as USAF resolution target, proving high resolution in quantitative imaging using the proposed system. Considering its fast and accurate imaging capability, it is believed the DMD based PIE technique provides a potential solution for medical observation and measurements.
To realize portable device with high contrast imaging capability, we designed a quantitative phase microscope using transport of intensity equation method based on a smartphone. The whole system employs an objective and an eyepiece as imaging system and a cost-effective LED as illumination source. A 3-D printed cradle is used to align these components. Images of different focal planes are captured by manual focusing, followed by calculation of sample phase via a self-developed Android application. To validate its accuracy, we first tested the device by measuring a random phase plate with known phases, and then red blood cell smear, Pap smear, broad bean epidermis sections and monocot root were also measured to show its performance. Owing to its advantages as accuracy, high-contrast, cost-effective and portability, the portable smartphone based quantitative phase microscope is a promising tool which can be future adopted in remote healthcare and medical diagnosis.
Massive image acquisition is required along the optical axis in the classical image-analysis-based autofocus method, which significantly decreases autofocus efficiency. A wavefront-sensing-based autofocus technique is proposed to increase the speed of autofocusing and obtain high localization accuracy. Intensities at different planes along the optical axis can be computed numerically after extracting the wavefront at defocus position with the help of the transport-of-intensity equation method. According to the focus criterion, the focal plane can then be determined, and after sample shifting to this plane, the in-focus image can be recorded. The proposed approach allows for fast, precise focus detection with fewer image acquisitions compared to classical image-analysis-based autofocus techniques, and it can be applied in commercial microscopes only with an extra illumination filter.
Erythrocyte morphology is an important factor in disease diagnosis, however, traditional setups as microscopes and cytometers cannot provide enough quantitative information of cellular morphology for in-depth statistics and analysis. In order to capture variations of erythrocytes affected by metal ions, quantitative interferometric microscopy (QIM) is applied to monitor their morphology changes. Combined with phase retrieval and cell recognition, erythrocyte phase images, as well as phase area and volume, can be accurately and automatically obtained. The research proves that QIM is an effective tool in cellular observation and measurement.
Quantitative interferometric microscopy is used in biological and medical fields and a wealth of applications are proposed in order to detect different kinds of biological samples. Here, we develop a phase detecting cytometer based on quantitative interferometric microscopy with expanded principal component analysis phase retrieval method to obtain phase distributions of red blood cells with a spatial resolution ~1.5 μm. Since expanded principal component analysis method is a time-domain phase retrieval algorithm, it could avoid disadvantages of traditional frequency-domain algorithms. Additionally, the phase retrieval method realizes high-speed phase imaging from multiple microscopic interferograms captured by CCD camera when the biological cells are scanned in the field of view. We believe this method can be a powerful tool to quantitatively measure the phase distributions of different biological samples in biological and medical fields.
Quantitative interferometric microscopy is an important method for observing biological samples such as cells and tissues. In order to obtain continuous phase distribution of the sample from the interferogram, phase extracting and phase unwrapping are both needed in quantitative interferometric microscopy. Phase extracting includes fast Fourier transform method and Hilbert transform method, etc., almost all of them are rapid methods. However, traditional unwrapping methods such as least squares algorithm, minimum network flow method, etc. are time-consuming to locate the phase discontinuities which lead to low processing efficiency. Other proposed high-speed phase unwrapping methods always need at least two interferograms to recover final phase distributions which cannot realize real time processing. Therefore, high-speed phase unwrapping algorithm for single interferogram is required to improve the calculation efficiency. Here, we propose a fast phase unwrapping algorithm to realize high-speed quantitative interferometric microscopy, by shifting mod 2π wrapped phase map for one pixel, then multiplying the original phase map and the shifted one, then the phase discontinuities location can be easily determined. Both numerical simulation and experiments confirm that the algorithm features fast, precise and reliable.
The paper proposed a simple large scale bio-sample phase detecting equipment called gravity driven phase detecting cytometer, which is based on quantitative interferometric microscopy to realize flowing red blood cells phase distribution detection. The method has advantages on high throughput phase detecting and statistical analysis with high detecting speed and in real-time. The statistical characteristics of red blood cells are useful for biological analysis and disease detection. We believe this method is shedding more light on quantitatively measurement of the phase distribution of bio-samples.
Single-shot quantitative interferometric microscopy (QIM) needs a high-accuracy and rapid phase retrieval algorithm. Retrieved phase distributions are often influenced by phase aberration background caused by both imaging system and phase retrieval algorithms. Here, we propose an improved phase aberration compensation (PAC) approach in order to eliminate the phase aberrations inherent in the data. With this method, sample-free parts are identified and used to calculate the background phase, reducing phase errors induced in samples and providing high-quality phase images. We now demonstrate that QIM based on this PAC approach realizes high-quality phase imaging from a single interferogram. This is of great potential for a real-time speedy diagnosis.
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