The cellular stress response has a vital role in regulating homeostasis by modulating cell survival and death. Stress granules are cytoplasmic compartments that enable cells to survive various stressors. Defects in the assembly and disassembly of stress granules are linked to neurodegenerative diseases, aberrant antiviral responses and cancer 1-5. Inflammasomes are multiprotein heteromeric complexes that sense molecular patterns that are associated with damage or intracellular pathogens, and assemble into cytosolic compartments known as ASC specks to
An extension of Nomarski differential interference contrast microscopy enables isotropic linear phase imaging through the combination of phase shifting, two directions of shear, and Fourier space integration using a modified spiral phase transform. We apply this method to simulated and experimentally acquired images of partially absorptive test objects. A direct comparison of the computationally determined phase to the true object phase demonstrates the capabilities of the method. Simulation results predict and confirm results obtained from experimentally acquired images.
Spatial light modulator (SLM) implementation of wavefront encoding enables various types of engineered point-spread functions (PSFs), including the generalized-cubic and squared-cubic phase mask wavefront encoded (WFE) PSFs, shown to reduce the impact of sample-induced spherical aberration in fluorescence microscopy. This investigation validates dynamic experimental parameter variation of these WFE-PSFs. We find that particular design parameter bounds exist, within which the divergence of computed and experimental WFE-PSFs is of the same order of magnitude as that of computed and experimental conventional PSFs, such that model-based approaches for solving the inverse imaging problem can be applied to a wide range of SLM-WFE systems. Interferometric measurements were obtained to evaluate the SLM implementation of the numeric mask. Agreement between experiment and theory in terms of a wrapped phase, 0-2π, validates the phase mask implementation and allows characterization of the SLM response. These measurements substantiate experimental practice of computational-optical microscope imaging with an SLM-engineered PSF.
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