Coherent laser source for high frame-rate optical time-stretch microscopy at 1.0 μm

We demonstrate a coherent picosecond pulsed fiber laser for the high frame-rate optical time-stretch microscopy at 1.0 μm. The spectrum of a picosecond pulsed laser is commonly broadened before the time-stretch imaging, which however will degrade its stability and coherence. As a result, it is required to enhance the degraded signal-to-noise ratio by averaging, which would compromise the frame rate on the other hand. Instead of pursuing such kind of spectrum-broadened picosecond pulsed laser sources, we propose a pulse train extracted directly from an all-normal dispersion mode-locked fiber laser with a rectangle-shaped optical spectrum. It delivers stable and coherent performance for the serial time-encoded amplified microscopy at 1.0 μm. With this robust picosecond pulsed laser, real-time stain-free flow imaging with a frame rate of 26.25 MHz and a spatial resolution of <; 2 μm is demonstrated. Featured with the compact configuration and good coherence property, it is a promising picosecond pulsed fiber laser source for the ultrafast interferometric time-stretch microscopy at 1.0 μm.published_or_final_versio

Chronic benign neutropenia among Chinese children

Objective. To delineate the clinical behaviour of chronic benign neutropenia in Chinese children in Hong Kong. Design. Retrospective study. Setting. University teaching hospital, Hong Kong. Patients. All infants and children with absolute neutrophil count of 1.5 × 109 /L or lower for more than 3 months. Main outcome measures. Development of significant infection, and achievement of remission. Results. Twenty-four children with chronic benign neutropenia were identified between 1992 and 2001. Their median age of diagnosis was 9 months. The mean (standard deviation) initial absolute neutrophil count was 0.28 × 109 /L (0.24 × 109 /L). Twenty-three patients presented with infection. Of the 19 patients tested, four (21%) were positive for anti-neutrophil antibodies. Bone marrow examination was performed in 17 patients: nine had normal results, but six showed evidence of peripheral consumption, one showed late maturation arrest at band stage, and one showed phagocytosis of myeloid cells by histiocytes. The overall hospitalised infection rate was 51.6 episodes per 1000 patient-months. Ten percent of cases were considered 'significant' infections and required hospital admission with either surgical intervention or intravenous therapy (antibiotics or fluid replacement). In the first year of diagnosis, more than 80% of patients had their lowest absolute neutrophil count (mean, 0.16 × 109 /L; standard deviation, 0.11 × 109 /L). Granulocyte-colony stimulating factor was used to treat three patients and induced transient elevation of absolute neutrophil count in all three. The projected remission rate was 55.4% at 3 years. Even for those with persistent disease, there was significant recovery in absolute neutrophil count to a mean of 0.5 × 109 /L (P<0.01). Conclusions. Patients with chronic benign neutropenia experienced a relatively benign clinical course regardless of their remission status. Only a small proportion of patients developed significant infections. A multi-centre prospective study may help identify predictive factors of remission.published_or_final_versio

Ultrafast quantitative time-stretch imaging flow cytometry of phytoplankton

Biomedical Spectroscopy, Microscopy, and Imaging: 9720 - High-Speed Biomedical Imaging and Spectroscopy: Toward Big Data Instrumentation and Management: Paper 9720-35Comprehensive quantification of phytoplankton abundance, sizes and other parameters, e.g. biomasses, has been an important, yet daunting task in aquatic sciences and biofuel research. It is primarily because of the lack of effective tool to image and thus accurately profile individual microalgae in a large population. The phytoplankton species are highly diversified and heterogeneous in terms of their sizes and the richness in morphological complexity. This fact makes time-stretch imaging, a new ultrafast real-time optical imaging technology, particularly suitable for ultralarge-scale taxonomic classification of phytoplankton together with quantitative image recognition and analysis. We here demonstrate quantitative imaging flow cytometry of single phytoplankton based on quantitative asymmetric-detection time-stretch optical microscopy (Q-ATOM) – a new time-stretch imaging modality for label-free quantitative phase imaging without interferometric implementations. Sharing the similar concept of Schlieren imaging, Q-ATOM accesses multiple phase-gradient contrasts of each single phytoplankton, from which the quantitative phase profile is computed. We employ such system to capture, at an imaging line-scan rate of 11.6 MHz, high-resolution images of two phytoplankton populations (scenedesmus and chlamydomonas) in ultrafast microfluidic flow (3 m/s). We further perform quantitative taxonomic screening analysis enabled by this technique. More importantly, the system can also generate quantitative phase images of single phytoplankton. This is especially useful for label-free quantification of biomasses (e.g. lipid droplets) of the particular species of interest – an important task adopted in biofuel applications. Combining machine learning for automated classification, Q-ATOM could be an attractive platform for continuous and real-time ultralarge-scale single-phytoplankton analysis.The 2016 SPIE Photonics West Conference, San Francisco, CA., 13-18 February 2016. In Conference Proceedings, 2016, v. 9720, paper no. 9720-3

Ultrafast spectral-domain optical coherence tomography realized by parametric spectro-temporal analyzer

Performance of the spectral-domain optical coherence tomography is limited by its A-scan rate, namely the frame rate of spectrometer. In this paper, 60-MHz A-scan rate is achieved by adopting a recently demonstrated parametric spectro-temporal analyzer. © 2015 OSApostprin

Optical time-stretch microscopy enabled by free-space angular-chirp-enhanced delay

published_or_final_versio

HLA alleles associated with asparaginase hypersensitivity in Chinese children

Asparaginase is an important drug to treat childhood haematological malignancies. Data on the association between human leukocyte antigens (HLA) and asparaginase hypersensitivity among Chinese are lacking. We conducted a retrospective study to identify HLA alleles associated with asparaginase hypersensitivity among Chinese children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), mixed phenotype leukaemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), who received asparaginases with HLA typing performed between 2009 and 2019. 107 Chinese patients were analysed. 66.3% (71/107) developed hypersensitivity to at least one of the asparaginases. HLA-B*46:01 (OR 3.8, 95% CI 1.4-10.1, p < 0.01) and DRB1*09:01 (OR 4.3, 95% CI 1.6-11.4, p < 0.01) were significantly associated with L-asparaginase hypersensitivities, which remained significant after adjustment for age, gender and B cell ALL [HLA-B*46:01 (adjusted OR 3.5, 95% 1.3-10.5, p = 0.02) and DRB1*09:01 (OR 4.4, 95% CI 1.6-13.3, p < 0.01)]

Five insights from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 provides a rules-based synthesis of the available evidence on levels and trends in health outcomes, a diverse set of risk factors, and health system responses. GBD 2019 covered 204 countries and territories, as well as first administrative level disaggregations for 22 countries, from 1990 to 2019. Because GBD is highly standardised and comprehensive, spanning both fatal and non-fatal outcomes, and uses a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of hierarchical disease and injury causes, the study provides a powerful basis for detailed and broad insights on global health trends and emerging challenges. GBD 2019 incorporates data from 281 586 sources and provides more than 3.5 billion estimates of health outcome and health system measures of interest for global, national, and subnational policy dialogue. All GBD estimates are publicly available and adhere to the Guidelines on Accurate and Transparent Health Estimate Reporting. From this vast amount of information, five key insights that are important for health, social, and economic development strategies have been distilled. These insights are subject to the many limitations outlined in each of the component GBD capstone papers.Peer reviewe