Recommendation with User Active Disclosing Willingness

Recommender system has been deployed in a large amount of real-world applications, profoundly influencing people's daily life and production.Traditional recommender models mostly collect as comprehensive as possible user behaviors for accurate preference estimation. However, considering the privacy, preference shaping and other issues, the users may not want to disclose all their behaviors for training the model. In this paper, we study a novel recommendation paradigm, where the users are allowed to indicate their "willingness" on disclosing different behaviors, and the models are optimized by trading-off the recommendation quality as well as the violation of the user "willingness". More specifically, we formulate the recommendation problem as a multiplayer game, where the action is a selection vector representing whether the items are involved into the model training. For efficiently solving this game, we design a tailored algorithm based on influence function to lower the time cost for recommendation quality exploration, and also extend it with multiple anchor selection vectors.We conduct extensive experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of our model on balancing the recommendation quality and user disclosing willingness

Optimization of a Decellularization/Recellularization Strategy for Transplantable Bioengineered Liver

The liver is a complex organ that requires constant perfusion for the delivery of nutrients and oxygen and the removal of waste in order to survive. Efforts to recreate or mimic the liver microstructure via a ground-up approach are essential for liver tissue engineering. A decellularization/recellularization strategy is one of the approaches aiming at the possibility of producing a fully functional organ with in vitro-developed construction for clinical applications to replace failed livers, such as end-stage liver disease (ESLD). However, the complexity of the liver microarchitecture along with the limited suitable hepatic component, such as the optimization of the extracellular matrix (ECM) of the biomaterials, the selection of the seed cells, and development of the liver-specific three-dimensional (3D) niche settings, pose numerous challenges. In this chapter, we have provided a comprehensive outlook on how the physiological, pathological, and spatiotemporal aspects of these drawbacks can be turned into the current challenges in the field, and put forward a few techniques with the potential to address these challenges, mainly focusing on a decellularization-based liver regeneration strategy. We hypothesize the primary concepts necessary for constructing tissue-engineered liver organs based on either an intact (from a naïve liver) or a partial (from a pretreated liver) structure via simulating the natural development and regenerative processes

High‐Speed Large‐Field Multifocal Illumination Fluorescence Microscopy

Scanning optical microscopy techniques are commonly restricted to a sub‐millimeter field‐of‐view (FOV) or otherwise employ slow mechanical translation, limiting their applicability for imaging fast biological dynamics occurring over large areas. A rapid scanning large‐field multifocal illumination (LMI) fluorescence microscopy technique is devised based on a beam‐splitting grating and an acousto‐optic deflector synchronized with a high‐speed camera to attain real‐time fluorescence microscopy over a centimeter‐scale FOV. Owing to its large depth of focus, the approach allows noninvasive visualization of perfusion across the entire mouse cerebral cortex, not achievable with conventional wide‐field fluorescence microscopy methods. The new concept can readily be incorporated into conventional wide‐field microscopes to mitigate image blur due to tissue scattering and attain optimal trade‐off between spatial resolution and FOV. It further establishes a bridge between conventional wide‐field macroscopy and laser scanning confocal microscopy, thus it is anticipated to find broad applicability in functional neuroimaging, in vivo cell tracking, and other applications looking at large‐scale fluorescent‐based biodynamics

Optimal Transport for Treatment Effect Estimation

Estimating conditional average treatment effect from observational data is highly challenging due to the existence of treatment selection bias. Prevalent methods mitigate this issue by aligning distributions of different treatment groups in the latent space. However, there are two critical problems that these methods fail to address: (1) mini-batch sampling effects (MSE), which causes misalignment in non-ideal mini-batches with outcome imbalance and outliers; (2) unobserved confounder effects (UCE), which results in inaccurate discrepancy calculation due to the neglect of unobserved confounders. To tackle these problems, we propose a principled approach named Entire Space CounterFactual Regression (ESCFR), which is a new take on optimal transport in the context of causality. Specifically, based on the framework of stochastic optimal transport, we propose a relaxed mass-preserving regularizer to address the MSE issue and design a proximal factual outcome regularizer to handle the UCE issue. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed ESCFR can successfully tackle the treatment selection bias and achieve significantly better performance than state-of-the-art methods.Comment: Accepted as NeurIPS 2023 Poste

Detection of cerebral tauopathy in P301L mice using high-resolution large-field multifocal illumination fluorescence microscopy

Current intravital microscopy techniques visualize tauopathy with high-resolution, but have a small field-of-view and depth-of-focus. Herein, we report a transcranial detection of tauopathy over the entire cortex of P301L tauopathy mice using large-field multifocal illumination (LMI) fluorescence microscopy technique and luminescent conjugated oligothiophenes. In vitro assays revealed that fluorescent ligand h-FTAA is optimal for in vivo tau imaging, which was confirmed by observing elevated probe retention in the cortex of P301L mice compared to non-transgenic littermates. Immunohistochemical staining further verified the specificity of h-FTAA to detect tauopathy in P301L mice. The new imaging platform can be leveraged in pre-clinical mechanistic studies of tau spreading and clearance as well as longitudinal monitoring of tau targeting therapeutics

Liver Imaging Reporting and Data System (LI-RADS) v2018: differential diagnostic value of ADC values for benign and malignant nodules with moderate probability (LR-3)

ObjectiveTo evaluate the usefulness of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) in differentiating between benign and malignant LR-3 lesions classified by Liver Imaging Reporting and Data System 2018 (LI-RADS v2018).MethodsRetrospectively analyzed 88 patients with liver nodules confirmed by pathology and classified as LR-3 by LI-RADS. All patients underwent preoperative contrast-enhanced MR examination, and the following patient-related imaging features were collected: tumor size,nonrim APHE, nonperipheral “washout”, enhancing “capsule”, mild-moderate T2 hyperintensity, fat in mass, restricted diffusion, and nodule-in-nodule architecture. We performed ROC analysis and calculated the sensitivity and specificity.ResultsA total of 122 lesions were found in 88 patients, with 68 benign and 54 malignant lesions. The mean ADC value for malignant and benign lesions were 1.01 ± 0.15 × 103 mm2/s and 1.41 ± 0.31 × 103 mm2/s, respectively. The ADC value of malignant lesions was significantly lower than that of benign lesions, p < 0.0001. Compared with other imaging features, ADC values had the highest AUC (AUC = 0.909), with a sensitivity of 92.6% and a specificity of 74.1% for the differentiation of benign and malignant lesions.ConclusionsADC values are useful for differentiating between benign and malignant liver nodules in LR-3 classification, it improves the sensitivity of LI-RADS in the diagnosis of HCC while maintaining high specificity, and we recommend including ADC values in the standard interpretation of LI-RADSv2018

Deep optoacoustic localization microangiography of ischemic stroke in mice

Super-resolution optoacoustic imaging of microvascular structures deep in mammalian tissues has so far been impeded by strong absorption from densely-packed red blood cells. Here we devised 5 µm biocompatible dichloromethane-based microdroplets exhibiting several orders of magnitude higher optical absorption than red blood cells at near-infrared wavelengths, thus enabling single-particle detection in vivo. We demonstrate non-invasive three-dimensional microangiography of the mouse brain beyond the acoustic diffraction limit (<20 µm resolution). Blood flow velocity quantification in microvascular networks and light fluence mapping was also accomplished. In mice affected by acute ischemic stroke, the multi-parametric multi-scale observations enabled by super-resolution and spectroscopic optoacoustic imaging revealed significant differences in microvascular density, flow and oxygen saturation in ipsi- and contra-lateral brain hemispheres. Given the sensitivity of optoacoustics to functional, metabolic and molecular events in living tissues, the new approach paves the way for non-invasive microscopic observations with unrivaled resolution, contrast and speed

Data on a novel liver bioscaffold (rDLS) generated from regenerative liver with activated extracellular matrix for functional liver regeneration

The data presented in this article are related to the original research article entitled “A novel bioscaffold with naturally-occurring extracellular matrix promotes hepatocyte survival and vessel patency in mouse models of heterologous transplantation” (Yang et al., in press) [1]. This article describes a decellularized liver scaffold (DLS) that derived from partial hepatectomy liver (rDLS) which supported primary hepatocyte survival and promoted blood patency, as compared with a conventional scaffold that generated from naïve liver (nDLS). Analysis by immunochemistry and scanning electron microscope (SEM) showed that the vessel network and extracellular matrix (ECM) components were similar to the nDLS. The rDLS could prevent blood clotting after transplanted it in vivo, identified by immunofluorescence staining for the integrin (αIIb, α4) expression and liver transplantation models (mice, pigs) a formed well-blood petency liver lobules. These data indicate that the novel scaffold (rDLS) with naturally-occurring “activated ECM” that may be useful for the implantation in vivo of a bioengineered organoid that is able to exert function long term without clotting in future clinic

Diffuse optical localization imaging for noninvasive deep brain microangiography in the NIR-II window

Fluorescence microscopy is a powerful enabling tool for biological discovery, albeit its effective penetration depth and resolving capacity are limited due to intense light scattering in living tissues. The recently introduced short-wave infrared cameras and contrast agents featuring fluorescence emission in the second near-infrared (NIR-II) window have extended the achievable penetration to about 2 mm. However, the effective spatial resolution progressively deteriorates with depth due to photon diffusion. Here we introduce diffuse optical localization imaging (DOLI) to enable super-resolution deep-tissue fluorescence microscopy beyond the limits imposed by light diffusion. The method is based on localization of flowing microdroplets encapsulating lead sulfide (PbS)-based quantum dots in a sequence of epi-fluorescence images acquired in the NIR-II spectral window. Experiments performed in tissue mimicking phantoms indicate that high-resolution detection of fluorescent particles can be preserved over 4 mm depth range, while in vivo microangiography of murine cerebral vasculature can be accomplished through intact scalp and skull. The method further enables retrieving depth information from planar fluorescence image recordings by exploiting the localized spot size. DOLI operates in a resolution-depth regime previously inaccessible with optical methods, thus massively enhancing the applicability of fluorescence-based imaging techniques

Widefield fluorescence localization microscopy for transcranial imaging of cortical perfusion with capillary resolution

Imaging of cerebral vasculature is impeded with the existing fluorescence microscopy methods due to intense light scattering in living tissues and the need for highly invasive craniotomy procedures to resolve structures on a capillary scale. We propose a widefield fluorescence localization microscopy technique for high-resolution transcranial imaging and quantitative assessment of cortical perfusion in mice. The method is based on tracking single fluorescent microparticles sparsely distributed in the blood stream using a simple CMOS camera and a continuous-wave laser source. We demonstrate quantitative transcranial in vivo mapping of the blood flow velocity and direction at capillary level resolution (5 µm) across the entire cortex. The new technique opens a new high-resolution transcranial window into the brain function in health and disease