Using Optical Tweezers to Study the Friction of the Red Blood Cells

In the last two decades the study of red blood cell elasticity using optical tweezers has known a rise appearing in the scientific research with regard to the various works carried out. Despite the various work done, no study has been done so far to study the influence of friction on the red blood cell indentation response using optical tweezers. In this study, we have developed a new approach to determine the coefficient of friction as well as the frictional forces of the red blood cell. This approach therefore allowed us to simultaneously carry out the indentation and traction test, which allowed us to extract the interfacial properties of the microbead red blood cell couple, among other things, the friction coefficient. This property would be extremely important to investigate the survival and mechanical features of cells, which will be of great physiological and pathological significance. But taking into account the hypothesis of friction as defined by the isotropic Coulomb law. The experiment performed for this purpose is the Brinell Hardness Test (DB).

Multi-Spectral and Fluorescence Imaging in Prevention of Overdose of Herbicides: The Case of Maize

Evaluation of the impact of herbicides on maize was done through multi- spectral and multi-modal imaging and multi-spectral fluorescence imaging combined with statistical methods. Spectra containing 13 wavelengths ranging from 375 nm to 940 nm were derived from multi-spectral images in transmission, reflection and scattering mode and fluorescence images obtained using high-pass filters (F450 nm, F500 nm, F550 nm, F600 nm, F650 nm) on control maize samples and maize samples treated with Herbextra herbicide were used. The appearance of the spectra allowed us to characterize the effect of the herbicide on the maize pigment concentration. The fluorescence images allowed us to track the fate of absorbed energy and through PLS-DA and SVM-DA to discriminate the two leaf categories with very low error rates for the test, i.e. 4.9% and 2% respectively. The results of this technique can be used in the context of precision agriculture.

Classification of African Mosaic Virus Infected Cassava Leaves by the Use of Multi-Spectral Imaging

In this work, we have used multispectral imaging technology to classify cassava leaves infected by African mosaic virus by the use of their unique spectral finger print. The spectra are extracted from transmission, reflection and diffusion of their multispectral images;they have been then analyzed with statistical multivariate analysis techniques. Principal component analysis (PCA) has been used followed by K-means and Ascending Hierarchical Classification (AHC) to endorse the classification. The contribution of this work is the use of multispectral imagery which binds both spatial and spectral information to differentiate and sort infected leaves. The results show that the multimodal and imaging spectroscopy may allow blind identification and characterization of infected leaves.

Use of Fluorescence and Reflectance Spectra for Predicting Okra (<i>Abelmoschus esculentus</i>) Yield and Macronutrient Contents of Leaves

In-field proximal sensing of most major crops nutrients still remains an economical and technical challenge. For this purpose, the use of effective multi-excitation fluorescence and reflectance wavelengths is explored in this work on Okra plant. Visible-near infrared (400 - 1000 nm) reflectance and multi-fluorescence data were collected at leaf scale in a chemically fertilized field by using an USB spectrometer mounted with an Arduino-based LED driver clip. N, P, K and Ca content of samples leaves were measured using reference methods. Average pods yield and leaves macronutrients content were calibrated using IRIV-PLS regression after spectra pretreatments. Single informative wavelengths bands in reflectance, red and far-red fluorescences were selected for building yield and macronutrient content models. We showed that flowering stage was more suitable for yield prediction. Moderately useful macronutrient models were found in Ca content (RPDval = 1.93, rP = 0.818) and potassium content with RPDval = 1.8, rP = 0.88. P and N yielding prediction performance of RPDval = 1.61 (rP = 0.718 ) and RPDval = 1.46 (rP = 0.56) respectively were less accurate. This study demonstrates potentiality of fluorescence and reflectance spectroscopy for accurate estimation of leaf macronutrient content and crop yield. High selectivity obtained from resulted spectral bands could lead to the development of reliable, rapid and cost-effective devices for nutrient diagnosis.

Characterization of a Multimodal and Multispectral Led Imager: Application to Organic Polymer’s Microspheres with Diameter Φ = 10.2 μm

Multispectral microscopy enables information enhancement in the study of specimens because of the large spectral band used in this technique. A low cost multimode multispectral microscope using a camera and a set of quasi-monochromatic Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) ranging from ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths as illumination sources was constructed. But the use of a large spectral band provided by non-monochromatic sources induces variation of focal plan of the imager due to chromatic aberration which rises up the diffraction effects and blurs the images causing shadow around them. It results in discrepancies between standard spectra and extracted spectra with microscope. So we need to calibrate that instrument to be a standard one. We proceed with two types of images comparison to choose the reference wavelength for image acquisition where diffraction effect is more reduced. At each wavelength chosen as a reference, one image is well contrasted. First, we compare the thirteen well contrasted images to identify that presenting more reduced shadow. In second time, we determine the mean of the shadow size over the images from each set. The correction of the discrepancies required measurements on filters using a standard spectrometer and the microscope in transmission mode and reflection mode. To evaluate the capacity of our device to transmit information in frequency domain, its modulation transfer function is evaluated. Multivariate analysis is used to test its capacity to recognize properties of well-known sample. The wavelength 700 nm was chosen to be the reference for the image acquisition, because at this wavelength the images are well contrasted. The measurement made on the filters suggested correction coefficients in transmission mode and reflection mode. The experimental instrument recognized the microsphere’s properties and led to the extraction of the standard transmittance and reflectance spectra. Therefore, this microscope is used as a conventional instrument.

Dynamics Study of the Deformation of Red Blood Cell by Optical Tweezers

In recent years, extensive research has been carried out on red blood cells in order to investigate their mechanical properties. The interest in these studies has been possible thanks to the technological innovations made in the field of micro or nano manipulation of biological and non-biological particles without physical contact. In the present project, we have developed a new approach to study the deformation of red blood cells moving against a trapped microbead by applying a sinusoidal voltage (DC offset 3.5 Vpp) to the stage at 0.4 Hz frequencies. The oscillating movement imposed on the stage highlights the indentation test and the tensile test known for the study of mechanical behavior of materials. The mechanical properties found are: the modulus of elasticity (Young Modulus), the shear modulus, the coefficient of hardening and erythrocyte resistance coefficient. The axial shear modulus 25.00 ± 1.5 μN/m and the transversal shear modulus 15.7 ± 4.63 μN/m were compared to those in the literature. These values were respectively determined by Hooke’s law and the Hertz model.

Structured Imagery Processing Strategies for Spectroscopic Measurement in Dense Solutions

Absorbance measurement in dense media via conventional optical spectroscopy techniques leads to inaccurate results. This is mainly due to multiple scattering phenomena that contribute to the overall light extinction in the interrogated sample. This limitation imposes the use of dilute solutions for absorption spectroscopy. However, depending on the polarity of the solvent used, the absorption spectrum may vary over a given solution. Structured illumination technique offers an alternative to this problem, and provides the ability to calculate in-situ optical properties in dense media. In this paper, we propose two processing methods applied to images acquired by structured laser illumination planar imaging (SLIPI) technique to extract extinction coefficients μ_e of probed solutions: The first is based on the implementation of principal component analysis (PCA) and the second, on the calculation of Mean Value. In practice, two kinds of studies were carried out: one quantitative set of measurements within chlorophyll liquid solutions and a second set with concentrated coffee solutions, with controlled proportion and concentrations for each sample. These two proposed analytical techniques are advantageous because they are very easy to implement and provide a much simpler alternative to the previous one. Both methods offer satisfactory results, similar to those obtained with the original method which is based on 1D Fourier transform.

A Local Binary Pattern-Based Method for Color and Multicomponent Texture Analysis

Local Binary Patterns (LBPs) have been highly used in texture classification for their robustness, their ease of implementation and their low computational cost. Initially designed to deal with gray level images, several methods based on them in the literature have been proposed for images having more than one spectral band. To achieve it, whether assumption using color information or combining spectral band two by two was done. Those methods use micro structures as texture features. In this paper, our goal was to design texture features which are relevant to color and multicomponent texture analysis without any assumption. Based on methods designed for gray scale images, we find the combination of micro and macro structures efficient for multispectral texture analysis. The experimentations were carried out on color images from Outex databases and multicomponent images from red blood cells captured using a multispectral microscope equipped with 13 LEDs ranging from 375 nm to 940 nm. In all achieved experimentations, our proposal presents the best classification scores compared to common multicomponent LBP methods. 99.81%, 100.00%, 99.07% and 97.67% are maximum scores obtained with our strategy respectively applied to images subject to rotation, blur, illumination variation and the multicomponent ones.