Visualization 2: Reduction of distortion in photothermal microscopy and its application to the high-resolution three-dimensional imaging of nonfluorescent tissues

Media2 Originally published in Biomedical Optics Express on 01 September 2015 (boe-6-9-3217

Label-Free Imaging of Melanoma with Confocal Photothermal Microscopy: Differentiation between Malignant and Benign Tissue

Label-free confocal photothermal (CPT) microscopy was utilized for the first time to investigate malignancy in mouse skin cells. Laser diodes (LDs) with 405 nm or 488 nm wavelengths were used as pumps, and a 638 nm LD was used as a probe for the CPT microscope. A Grey Level Cooccurrence Matrix (GLCM) for texture analysis was applied to the CPT images. Nine GLCM parameters were calculated with definite definitions for the intracellular super-resolved CPT images, and the parameters Entropy, Contrast, and Variance were found to be most suited among the nine parameters to discriminate clearly between healthy cells and malignant cells when a 405 nm pump was used. Prominence, Variance, and Shade were most suited when a pump wavelength of 488 nm was used

Visualization 1: Reduction of distortion in photothermal microscopy and its application to the high-resolution three-dimensional imaging of nonfluorescent tissues

Media1 Originally published in Biomedical Optics Express on 01 September 2015 (boe-6-9-3217

Stochastic modelling of the effects of human-mobility restriction and viral infection characteristics on the spread of COVID-19

Funding Information: This research was supported by a JSPS Grant-in-aid for scientific research (KAKENHI, 15H04359, and 18H02385). Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s). Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.After several months of "lockdown" as the sole answer to the COVID-19 pandemic, balancing the re-opening of society against the implementation of non-pharmaceutical measures needed for minimizing interpersonal contacts has become important. Here, we present a stochastic model that examines this problem. In our model, people are allowed to move between discrete positions on a one-dimensional grid with viral infection possible when two people are collocated at the same site. Our model features three sets of adjustable parameters, which characterize (i) viral transmission, (ii) viral detection, and (iii) degree of personal mobility, and as such, it is able to provide a qualitative assessment of the potential for second-wave infection outbreaks based on the timing, extent, and pattern of the lockdown relaxation strategies. Our results suggest that a full lockdown will yield the lowest number of infections (as anticipated) but we also found that when personal mobility exceeded a critical level, infections increased, quickly reaching a plateau that depended solely on the population density. Confinement was not effective if not accompanied by a detection/quarantine capacity surpassing 40% of the symptomatic patients. Finally, taking action to ensure a viral transmission probability of less than 0.4, which, in real life, may mean actions such as social distancing or mask-wearing, could be as effective as a soft lockdown.Peer reviewe

Media 1: Simultaneous dual-wavelength imaging of nonfluorescent tissues with 3D subdiffraction photothermal microscopy

Originally published in Optics Express on 09 February 2015 (oe-23-3-3647

Commensal bacteria regulate thymic Aire expression.

Commensal bacteria in gastrointestinal tracts are reported to function as an environmental factor to regulate intestinal inflammation and immune responses. However, it remains largely unknown whether such bacterial function exerts any effect on other immune organs distant from the intestine. In this study, the influence of commensal bacteria in the thymus, where T cell lineages develop into mature type to form proper repertoires, was investigated using germ-free (GF) mice and Nod1-deficient mice lacking an intracellular recognition receptor for certain bacterial components, in which a commensal bacterial effect is predicted to be less. In both mice, there was no significant difference in the numbers and subset ratios of thymocytes. Interestingly, however, autoimmune regulator (Aire) expression in thymic epithelial cells (TECs), main components of the thymic microenvironment, was decreased in comparison to specific pathogen-free (SPF) mice and Nod1 wild-type (WT) mice, respectively. In vitro analysis using a fetal thymus organ culture (FTOC) system showed that Aire expression in TECs was increased in the presence of a bacterial component or a bacterial product. These results suggest that through their products, commensal bacteria have the potential to have some effect on epithelial cells of the thymus in tissues distant from the intestine where they are originally harbored