| 1. |
- Barrett, Michael P., et al.
(författare)
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Microfluidics-based approaches to the isolation of African trypanosomes
- 2017
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Ingår i: Pathogens. - : MDPI AG. - 2076-0817. ; 6:4
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- African trypanosomes are responsible for significant levels of disease in both humans and animals. The protozoan parasites are free-living flagellates, usually transmitted by arthropod vectors, including the tsetse fly. In the mammalian host they live in the bloodstream and, in the case of human-infectious species, later invade the central nervous system. Diagnosis of the disease requires the positive identification of parasites in the bloodstream. This can be particularly challenging where parasite numbers are low, as is often the case in peripheral blood. Enriching parasites from body fluids is an important part of the diagnostic pathway. As more is learned about the physicochemical properties of trypanosomes, this information can be exploited through use of different microfluidic-based approaches to isolate the parasites from blood or other fluids. Here, we discuss recent advances in the use of microfluidics to separate trypanosomes from blood and to isolate single trypanosomes for analyses including drug screening.
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| 2. |
- Hochstetter, Axel, et al.
(författare)
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Deterministic Lateral Displacement : Challenges and Perspectives
- 2020
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Ingår i: ACS Nano. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1936-0851 .- 1936-086X. ; 14:9, s. 10784-10795
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The advent of microfluidics in the 1990s promised a revolution in multiple industries from healthcare to chemical processing. Deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) is a continuous-flow microfluidic particle separation method discovered in 2004 that has been applied successfully and widely to the separation of blood cells, yeast, spores, bacteria, viruses, DNA, droplets, and more. Deterministic lateral displacement is conceptually simple and can deliver consistent performance over a wide range of flow rates and particle concentrations. Despite wide use and in-depth study, DLD has not yet been fully elucidated or optimized, with different approaches to the same problem yielding varying results. We endeavor here to provide up-to-date expert opinion on the state-of-art and current fundamental, practical, and commercial challenges with DLD as well as describe experimental and modeling opportunities. Because these challenges and opportunities arise from constraints on hydrodynamics, fabrication, and operation at the micro- and nanoscale, we expect this Perspective to serve as a guide for the broader micro- and nanofluidic community to identify and to address open questions in the field.
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| 3. |
- Nordenfelt, Pontus, et al.
(författare)
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Matrix-masking to balance nonuniform illumination in microscopy
- 2018
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Ingår i: Optics Express. - 1094-4087. ; 26:13, s. 17279-17288
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- With a perfectly uniform illumination, the amount and concentration of fluorophores in any (biological) sample can be read directly from fluorescence micrographs. However, non-uniform illumination in optical micrographs is a common, yet avoidable artefact, often caused by the setup of the microscope, or by inherent properties caused by the nature of the sample. In this paper, we demonstrate simple matrix-based methods using the common computing environments MATLAB and Python to correct nonuniform illumination, using either a background image or extracting illumination information directly from the sample image, together with subsequent image processing. We compare the processes, algorithms, and results obtained from both MATLAB (commercially available) and Python (freeware). Additionally, we validate our method by evaluating commonly used alternative approaches, demonstrating that the best nonuniform illumination correction can be achieved when a separate background image is available.
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