Posts Tagged ‘images’
The 25 Best Places to Photograph on Planet Earth
Reinvented Microscope Scans Entire Largish Area at Once
Could be a boon to skin-scanning for cancer
Typical scanner microscopes do their work by sweeping the entire area to be scanned, recording images the whole time, and then compiling them into one concise depiction. But this new microscope, created by the legendary and restless designers at (also known for and ), is different. It's packed with "a multitude" of tiny sensors, according to the Fraunhofer press release, which each capture an image of a tiny section of the entire area. That capturing is done simultaneously, so there's no need for sweeping back and forth--just click and done. Then some software stitches all those chunks, each only 300 x 300 micrometers big, into one image.
The device is unusually small, too. The folks at Fraunhofer basically tore up everything they knew about scanner microscopes and started over, so the way their creation works is totally different. Knowing that, maybe it's not so surprising that the microscope is incredibly thin--the optical length (which is essentially the length of the light's path before it hits the sensors) is only 5.3 mm, so the entire device is very small.
On the other hand, the current prototype only captures areas about the size of a matchbox. And not one of those big kitchen matchboxes, the little ones you swipe in threes and fours from restaurants. But the production seems to be pretty easy: Fraunhofer says they can mass-produce the lenses using a process they compare to "the dentist's method of using UV light to harden fillings," and thus be able to enlarge the microscope without absorbing too much added cost. Possible uses are as varied as medicine and governmental--one of these guys could be scanning your shoulder for skin cancer (SPF it up, guys) or scanning your passport sometime in the future.
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New Mobile App Builds Realistic 3-D Models From Cell Phone Camera Snapshots
Microsoft researchers used PhotoSynth technology to build the app, but it goes beyond that photo-stitching program and also calculates the depth of an object. The model determines the camera’s location in space and determines the depth. You don’t have to worry about capturing perfectly overlapping panoramas — the software can smooth it all out, as Microsoft researcher Johannes Kopf .
The software preserves straight lines and eliminates holes and weird triangular gaps, a common problem in 3-D stitching.
To make a model, you would walk around an object, snapping overlapping pictures from different angles. Upload them to a server for processing, and the app downloads a 3-D model that you can grab and spin on your phone’s touchscreen. It recreates your view as you walked around, allowing you to see the object from every angle. Technology Review explains in .
This could be useful for selling items online, among a myriad other uses. The app uses much less bandwidth than a 3-D video would, because it only needs a few images.
The project was developed at Microsoft's Interactive Visual Media group.
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Video: New Microscope Produces 3-D Movies of Live Cells In Action
Cell biologists get observational omniscience
The technique uses a highly focused, super-thin beam of light similar to the type used in supermarket checkout scanners. It could allow cell biologists to watch the molecular underpinnings of cell action as they unfold.
“In looking at living systems, you want to be God. You want to have this omniscient power and be able to look at all time scales — not just single cells sitting on a microscope cover slip, but observe what’s happening in a single molecule in a single cell that is inside your heart right now. That’s the dream,” said Eric Betzig, research leader at the Janelia Farm Research Campus, part of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “You want to have this (omniscience) in a way that the organism is completely unaware and unaffected by that observation.”
The new technique, called Bessel beam plane illumination microscopy, could be the best way to do that without harming the cells.
In the past few months, other microscopy advances have allowed scientists to see 3-D structures of cells for the first time. MIT researchers are with magnetic resonance imaging to unveil 3-D images, for instance. A under development at the University of Massachusetts uses a fluorescent tagging technique (which Betzig has also studied) to create mosaic images. And just this week, scientists in the UK announced a new technique that amplifies optical observations to see , allowing cell and virus observations.
These are all promising techniques, but they’re equivalent to taking a snapshot. When you are trying to understand complex processes, a snapshot is only worth so much — ideally, you would capture a live-action movie. It’s more useful to watch the process of chromosomes pulling apart during cell division, like in the following video, or to see the ruffling of cell membranes, seen further below.
A movie would require observing a cell for a long time, but that causes some problems. If cells are not killed for the purposes of observing them, the process of lengthy observation does them in. One commonly used technique, confocal microscopy, uses a pinhole method to block out-of-focus light, allowing observations of very precise regions in the microscope’s focal plane. But the whole specimen is still blasted with light, Betzig said.
“You can’t study cells for too long before they literally curl up and die,” he said. “And you can’t study them very fast, because you have to scan them with a little point of light.” The images are distorted, too, he said.
Betzig was looking for ways to overcome these problems, and started studying plane illumination, or shining light at a subject from the side rather than from below, like most microscopes. A European group developed a plane illumination microscope in 2003, and used it to show the development of an embryo as cells continually divided.
“They work very well when you are looking at embryos, which are hundreds of micrometers in diameter,” Betzig said. “But they’re not so great if you want to peer inside the guts of what is happening in each cell, which is what I wanted to do.”
His research group decided to use a special focused beam called a Bessel beam, which does not diffract over long distances the way that regular light beams do. To keep the light super-focused, they had to modulate the beam, turning it on and off as it sweeps across the sample. The result is a series of high-speed images, which can be put together into a movie.
“We can study cells in their 3-D complexity at very high speeds for long periods of time. It’s the combination of high axial resolution, plus high speed, plus the non-invasiveness that makes it special,” Betzig said.
The wriggling mitochondria in this video represents 300 image stacks, each containing 300 two-dimensional images, taken in one second.
“That’s almost 100,000 images of a cell, without bleaching it or harming it,” Betzig said. “In in a second, can create an entire 3-D picture of what went on in that cell in that last second.”
The next step could be combining the Bessel beam plane technique with super-resolution techniques, Betzig said. That would be something — with no limits on how small we can see, and an imaging technique that take movies without harming organisms, the possibilities seem endless.
World’s Most Powerful Optical Microscope Lets Researchers See Inside Viruses
New technology breaks the theoretical limit on how small we can see
With the new method, there is theoretically no limit on how small an object researchers will be able to see. It could potentially see inside human cells and examine live viruses for the first time.
The standard optical microscope can only see items down to about one micrometer. To see things in the nanoscale, researchers use methods like scanning tunneling microscopes, scanning electron microscopes, transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy.
But these techniques are limited in scope, especially for applications like medicine. Electron microscopes can only see the surface of a cell, rather than examining its structure, for instance. And there is no way to see a live virus in action.
The new method works by integrating a microsphere “superlens” with a traditional optical microscope. The spheres magnify images of items that are placed on the microscope plate, touching the microsphere and forming “virtual images,” according to authors Zengbo Wang, Wei Guo and Lin Li of the University of Manchester, UK. The optical microscope magnifies the virtual images, forming a greatly enhanced image.
“The microspheres are in contact with objects, and the microscope must focus below the object surface to capture the image. This is a very different practice from the normal use of microscopes,” Li said in an e-mail.
Optical diffraction limits dictate that the smallest object that can be seen is around half the optical wavelength. For visible light, this is about 200 nanometers to 700 nanometers. That means the smallest thing you can actually see is about 200 nanometers — pretty small, but not small enough to resolve interesting molecules and cells.
The new method allowed Li and colleagues to see objects at 50 nanometers, he said.
“This clearly breaks the theoretical optical imaging limit,” he said.
It also overcomes some drawbacks associated with electron microscopes. A TEM sends a beam of electrons through an object, interacting with it as they pass through it. The device forms an image of this interaction and magnifies it. An SEM scans an object with a high-energy electron beam, which also interacts with the sample. The interaction can provide information about the object’s topography and composition. An STM applies a voltage very close to an object, allowing electrons to tunnel through the space between them. This current can be monitored as the voltage tip moves across the object, and is translated into an image. And an AFM essentially feels a surface using a mechanical probe.
Optical fluorescence microscopes can see inside cells by dyeing them, but it can’t penetrate viruses, and it would be nice to see cells without having to inject them with dye. What’s more, the electron methods involve chemical reactions that must be accounted for. Last year, for instance, IBM researchers made an AFM to figure out its chemical composition, but some scientists wondered whether the measuring method itself interfered with the molecule’s structure. It required putting the molecule on a salt crystal, but if no one knew the shape to begin with, they can’t know whether the salt affects the shape.
So it would be nice if you could just take a look at something and see it for yourself. This new method will allow that to happen — imaging viruses, DNA and molecules in real time.
The method uses optical near-field images, which has no diffraction limit, Li said. Near-field images are within the optical wavelength of the optics involved. Far field is beyond that distance.
“Therefore, theoretically, there is no limit on how small we can see. It will depend on how much can we amplify the image using the spheres and relay it to the far field,” Li said.
The team's paper is published in the journal Nature Communications.
The Most Amazing Science Images of 2010
Launch the gallery below, and enjoy our favorite pictures of the year, all in one place
our favorite science, technology, and general PopSci weirdness of the year
These pictures cover the year that was 2010 in the way we'll remember it: from disasters like the Gulf oil spill and the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull to incredible achievements like the construction of the world's longest underground tunnel; from medical improvements like spray-on stem cells to discoveries like NASA's new arsenic-loving bacteria; and, not least, utter silliness like a six-wheeled sports car or an endless variety of lovable robots. It's amazing to see it all in one place--the good, the bad, the ugly, the tube-nosed fruit bat--and we think you'll enjoy it as much as we do.
125 Glorious Years of Popular Science in One Giant Picture
Hey look, it's us! And us and us and us!
The image, which you can view here in its entirety if you think your computer is up to the challenge, shows the layout of one complete issue every five years. You can see the magazine slowly change from a hard science-focused, text-heavy publication in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (!) into the more visual and populist publication we have today. (Text-heavy publications would not succeed today, of course, because of the YouTubes.) There's also the move from illustrations to photographs, though thankfully we haven't totally abandoned illustrations.
It's definitely a more interesting approach than just showing the cover (there being more to science magazines than their covers, as the maxim goes). The complete archive of Popular Science is available for free, in case you want a more in-depth look at our history.
[Lev Manovich via Infosthetics via Gizmodo]