Sharif Digital Repository

In dual-beam optical traps, the precision of position/force measurements is often compromised by crosstalk, i.e. imperfect separation of the two signals. We devise a simple yet very efficient method to perform crosstalk eliminating spatial filtering  

The process of imaging a biomolecule by atomic force microscope (AFM) is modeled using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Since the large normal force exerted by the tip on the biosample in contact and tapping modes may damage the sample structure and produce irreversible deformation, the noncontact mode of AFM (NC-AFM) is employed as the operating mode. The biosample is scanned using a carbon nanotube (CNT) as the AFM probe. CNTs because of their small diameter, high aspect ratio and high mechanical resistance attract many attentions for imaging purposes. The tip-sample interaction is simulated by the MD method. The protein, which has been considered as the biomolecule, is ubiquitin and a... 

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) has a great potential to elicit clinically useful information from tissues due to its high axial and transversal resolution. In practice, an OCT setup cannot reach to its theoretical resolution due to imperfections of its components, which make its images blurry. The blurriness is different alongside regions of image; thus, they cannot be modeled by a unique point spread function (PSF). In this paper, we investigate the use of solid phantoms to estimate the PSF of each sub-region of imaging system. We then utilize Lucy-Richardson, Hybr and total variation (TV) based iterative deconvolution methods for mitigating occurred spatially variant blurriness. It is... 

Gold nanorods (GNRs) can be used in various biomedical applications; however, very little is known about their in vivo tissue distribution by radiolabeling. Here, we have developed a rapid and simple method with high yield and without disturbing their optical properties for radiolabeling of gold rods with iodine-131 in order to track in vivo tissue uptake of GNRs after systemic administration by biodistribution analysis and γ-imaging. Following intravenous injection into rat, PEGylated GNRs have much longer blood circulation times. We have developed a rapid and simple method for radiolabeling of gold rods with iodine-131 in order to track in vivo tissue uptake of gold nanorods after systemic... 

Nanotechnology could provide a new complementary approach to treat coronary artery disease (CAD) which is now one of the biggest killers in the Western world. The course of events, which leads to atherosclerosis and CAD, involves many biological factors and cellular disease processes which may be mitigated by therapeutic methods enhanced by nanotechnology. Nanoparticles can provide a variety of delivery systems for cargoes such as drugs and genes that can address many problems within the arteries. In order to improve the performance of current stents, nanotechnology provides different nanomaterial coatings, in addition to controlled-release nanocarriers, to prevent in-stent restenosis.... 

The combination of liposomes with magnetic nanoparticles, because of their strong effect on T2 relaxation can open new ways in the innovative cancer therapy and diagnosis. In order to design an intelligent contrast agent in MRI, we chose anti-HER2 nanobody the smallest fully functional antigen-binding fragments evolved from the variable domain, the VHH, of a camel heavy chain-only antibody. These targeted magnetoliposomes bind to the HER2 antigen which is highly expressed on breast and ovarian cancer cells so reducing the side effects as well as increasing image contrast and effectiveness. Cellular iron uptake analysis and in vitro MRI of HER2 positive cells incubated with targeted... 

OCT skin images suffer from artifacts. Speckle is the main artifact while the other one is called background noise. In this study, we propose an algorithm that significantly reduces the background noise before applying a speckle reduction method. The results show that the diagnostically relevant features in the images become clearer after applying the proposed method. We used sub-pixel weighted median filtering for speckle reduction. The results from background noise removal in combination with the proposed speckle reduction algorithm show a significant improvement in the clarity of diagnostically relevant features in in-vivo human skin images. © 2017 SPIE  

Optical Coherence Optical coherence tomography is a powerful high-resolution imaging method with a broad biomedical application. Nonetheless, OCT images suffer from a multiplicative artefacts so-called speckle, a result of coherent imaging of system. Digital filters become ubiquitous means for speckle reduction. Addressing the fact that there still a room for despeckling in OCT, we proposed an intelligent speckle reduction framework based on OCT tissue morphological, textural and optical features that through a trained network selects the winner filter in which adaptively suppress the speckle noise while preserve structural information of OCT signal. These parameters are calculated for... 

Compared with conventional cancer treatments, the main advantage of oncolytic virotherapy is its tumor-selective replication followed by the destruction of malignant cells without damaging healthy cells. Accordingly, this kind of biological therapy can potentially be used as a promising approach in the field of cancer management. Given the failure of traditional monitoring strategies (such as immunohistochemical analysis (in providing sufficient safety and efficacy necessary for virotherapy and continual pharmacologic monitoring to track pharmacokinetics in real-time, the development of alternative strategies for ongoing monitoring of oncolytic treatment in a live animal model seems... 

Molecular imaging (MI) can provide not only structural images utilizing temporal imaging techniques, but also functional and molecular data using a variety of newly developed imaging techniques. Nanotechnology’s application in MI has commanded a lot of attention in recent decades, and it has provided tremendous potential for imaging living subjects. In this study, D-glucosamine conjugated functionalized magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (Fe3O4-PEG-DG NPs) were prepared and studied as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents. To evaluate their distribution, single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is performed. Fe3O4 NPs are made using a well-known co-precipitation process... 

Synthesis of poly(2,5-dimethoxyanilie) (PDMA) catalyzed by nano reengineered horseradish peroxidase (HRP) with dendritic macromolecules, was studied as a function of reaction media. UV-vis, gel permeation chromatography and conductivity measurements were used to explain how the reaction media compositions influence the physical properties of PDMA. Nanostructured PDMA was also synthesized by oxidative polymerization in a novel and green bi-catalyst system involving HRP and ferric chloride. FTIR and UV-vis analysis confirmed the formation of emeraldine salt state of PDMA. The thermal stability of reengineered HRP granted further studies on the polymerization using bi-catalyst system at... 

Recent advances in medical imaging techniques have allowed pure displacement-control trunk models to estimate spinal loads with no need to calculate muscle forces. Sensitivity of these models to the errors in post-imaging evaluation of displacements (reported to be ∼0.4–0.9° and 0.2–0.3 mm in vertebral displacements) has not yet been investigated. A Monte Carlo analysis was therefore used to assess the sensitivity of results in both musculoskeletal (MS) and passive finite element (FE) spine models to errors in measured displacements. Six static activities in upright standing, flexed, and extended postures were initially simulated using a force-control hybrid MS-FE model. Computed vertebral... 

At present, nanoparticles are used for various biomedical applications where they facilitate laboratory diagnostics and therapeutics. More specifically for drug delivery purposes, the use of nanoparticles is attracting increasing attention due to their unique capabilities and their negligible side effects not only in cancer therapy but also in the treatment of other ailments. Among all types of nanoparticles, biocompatible superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) with proper surface architecture and conjugated targeting ligands/proteins have attracted a great deal of attention for drug delivery applications. This review covers recent advances in the development of SPIONs together...