Production of food nanomaterials by specialized equipment

In the past decade, there has been a great interest in using nanotechnology by different industries, including food, pharmaceutical, and beauty. Nanotechnology provides many advantages to produce functional compounds which tend to be delivered for desired properties, such as protection from the environment or food matrix, controlled release, and increased bioavailability and bioaccessibility (Muhammad et al., 2019, Sedaghat Doost et al., 2019b, Sedaghat Doost et al., 2018c). There is a variety of methods to prepare food nanomaterials. Specialized equipment is frequently employed for the production of efficient nano-delivery systems, which is the focus of this chapter; the basic principle of conventional and recent techniques, as well as their advantages and disadvantages are described

Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Combined with Conventional Intravascular Ultrasound for Enhanced Assessment of Atherosclerotic Plaques: an Ex Vivo Study in Human Coronary Arteries

This study evaluates the ability of label-free fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIm) to complement intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) for concurrent visualization of human coronary vessel composition, structure, and pathology. Co-registered FLIm and IVUS data from 16 coronary segments were correlated to eight distinct pathological features including thin-cap fibroatheroma (TCFA). The sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value for combined FLIm-IVUS (89, 99, 89 %) were better than FLIm (70, 98, 88 %) and IVUS (45, 94, 62 %) alone in distinguishing between pathologies. FLIm can assess compositional changes in luminal surface through variations in fluorescence lifetime values (<3.5 ns for lipid-rich areas; >4 ns for collagen-rich areas) enabling detection of macrophages in fibrous caps (sensitivity, 86 %) and distinguishing between relatively stable thick-cap fibroatheromas and rupture-prone TCFA (sensitivity, 80 %) amongst other features. Current results demonstrate the potential of FLIm-IVUS as a new intravascular method for improved evaluation of plaques that may subsequently aid in guiding coronary intervention. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s12265-015-9627-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Standardized evaluation framework for evaluating coronary artery stenosis detection, stenosis quantification and lumen segmentation algorithms in computed tomography angiography

Though conventional coronary angiography (CCA) has been the standard of reference for diagnosing coronary artery disease in the past decades, computed tomography angiography (CIA) has rapidly emerged, and is nowadays widely used in clinical practice. Here, we introduce a standardized evaluation framework to reliably evaluate and compare the performance of the algorithms devised to detect and quantify the coronary artery stenoses, and to segment the coronary artery lumen in CIA data. The objective of this evaluation framework is to demonstrate the feasibility of dedicated algorithms to: (I) (semi-)automatically detect and quantify stenosis on CIA, in comparison with quantitative coronary angiography (QCA) and CIA consensus reading, and (2) (semi-)automatically segment the coronary lumen on CIA, in comparison with expert's manual annotation. A database consisting of 48 multicenter multivendor cardiac CIA datasets with corresponding reference standards are described and made available. The algorithms from 11 research groups were quantitatively evaluated and compared. The results show that (1) some of the current stenosis detection/quantification algorithms may be used for triage or as a second-reader in clinical practice, and that (2) automatic lumen segmentation is possible with a precision similar to that obtained by experts. The framework is open for new submissions through the website, at http://coronary.bigr.nl/stenoses/. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved