Week 1 Flashcards
Definition of Imaging
The visual representation of an object, such as a body part or celestial body, for the purpose of medical diagnosis or data collection, using any of a variety of usually computerised techniques.
What is an example of a type of imaging method which is excluded from the ‘imaging’ definition?
A photograph because it does not have a computerised teqnique element
What is a type of more abstract imaging methods?
Visualisation of calcium distribution in neurons with calcium imaging
What is the definition of functional imaging?
The task of functional brain imaging is to identify regions and their temporal relationships associated with theperformance of a well-designed task
What differentiated functional imaging from non functional?
- Functional provides added information if change that is happenning to respond in response to the scientific aspect
- It is often investigating a change in response to a stimulus or experiment design to see the function
What is the smallest level of resolution?
Molecular
What is the main issue of having an imaging method whihc measures to the sub-millimere in spatial and millisecond in temporal resolution?
This would provide too much information that would take too long to analyse
Is there an ideal imaging methodology which encapsulates sub-millimetre spatial and millisecond temporal resolution?
No single method today achieves this
What is an important thing to consider when chosing an imaging method?
Need to proportionally pick the method which has the required need of resolution- there is no point using a mehtod wih extremely fast temporal resolution to measure the slow growing of cells for example
What is the definition of spatial resolution?
Is the ability to distinguish two separateobjects that are positioned close to each other.
What are 3 factors that influence the spatial resolution?
- Optics
- Contrast within the images
-Blurrig in the imaged tissue (point spread function)
How can you improve the contrast of something we are imaging?
Use a stain
How would blurring affect spatial resolution?
The image becomes hazy and therefore bigger so there is less intensity in the profile mapped out
(same happens when there is less contrast)
What type of relationship is there between electromagnetic properties and resolution?
Linearly to the wavelength used
Why is there a limit to imaging using electromagnetic waves?
Because of diffraction there is a theoretical limit to the spatial resolution
What are three examples of Electro-magnetic imaging?
- X-ray
- Light microscope
- Electron microscope
What is the linear equation of theoretical resolution and EM imaging?
Minimum distance two objects can be resolved (x)= wavelength/sin (*) aperture angle
What is the aperture angle?
Angle of the object going into the objective
Is a larger or smaller angle aperture required for higher resolution?
Larger (inverse to the distance)
Is a larger or smaller minimum distance objects can be resolved required for a higher resolution
Smaller
What are two tricks to improve the theoretical resolution?
- Immersion lenses
- Super-resolution microscopy
How many times better is an electron microscope compared to a light one?
10,000 times
What is the signal to noise ratio (SNR)?
- Describes the relationship between the size of the meaningful signal and the size of the recorded noise
- It is a measure of the statistical accuracyof data from an imaging device
What is the SNR in imaging described by?
The mean value in a pixel compared to the standard deviation of that pixel in repeated measurements (takes the same picture again and again to see if there are changes due to noise)
What are 4 sources of noise in imaging?
- Photon shot noise
- Dark noise or sensor noise
- Biological motion
- Technical artefacts
What is Photon shot noise?
Is produced by the stochastic process at which photons are emitted from a light source (sensitive instruments pick up the varying intensity in light sources)
How can you overcome photon shot noise?
Lasers
What is dark noise or sensor noise?
Is the variation in the sensor read out in complete darkness. Basically all electronics have noise and variation (taking a pic i the dark- will portray grey and white dots or noise instead of the true blackness-because of a contrast issue)
What is biological motion?
Like a heart beat or respiration- the heart can be difficult to measure as it changes over time (could take the image at the same phase of the heart beat to get around this).
What are technical artefacts?
Like the susceptability artefact in fMRI- for example if taking an image of the head, there are big changes in material density from the cavity of the sinuses compared to the teeth.
How can you overcome bad SNR?
The basic idea behind improving the SNR is that the noise in your data is random and the signal you are interested in is not
Therefore if you record a signal several times and average you should end up with the mean of the real data whereas the noise cancels out
What types of imaging cannot be repeated to improve the SNR?
Invasive techniques such as PET scans.
What can invasiveness mean?
- Exposing the surface of the brain like in Optical Imaging.
- But it can also mean exposure to other damaging effects like radioactive material in PET
Why was light microscopy such an exciting scientific development?
Allowed a step change is the understanding of disease/medicine and research progression
Where does the word microscope originate from?
- Skopein– see
- Mikros– Little
What is a light microscope?
A microscope (device to magnify small objects) in which objects are lit directly by white light
What generation of people were the first to understand lenses?
The ancient Egyptians
What did the ancient Egyptions use in relation to lenses?
Used convex lenses to magnify small objects
Who invented the compound microscope?
Hands and Zacharius Jansen in 1591
What is a compound microscope?
Using a set of two lenses arranged in a way where the focal point of one lens falls on the focal point of another giving mroe magnification
Who published micrographia and what did it entail?
- 1665, Robert Hooke
- How to use mirror angles in a way to allow sunlight to enter the specimen
Who increased the curvature of the lens in order to increase the magnification of the light microscope and what did this lead to the discovery of?
- 1673, Anthony Van Leewenhoek
- Used the curvature to influence where the focal point was in order to discover- bacteria, water, sperm and blood cells
When looking through a light microscope are we looking at the image of a specimen or the specimen itself?
Image
What is magnification?
The ratio of the apparent size of the object as seen through the microscope (image size) to the real size of the object (object size)
Thus, an image being seen at a magnification of 100X means that its linear dimensions are 100 times those of the object giving rise to the image
How do you work out the total compound of the magnification?
- Objective x Ocular
- 100x * 10x = 1000x
What is the magnification of a single lens microscope ranging from?
- 1.5-2
- Mild magnification
What happens to the magnification when we add a second (compounded lens)?
- The focus point of the first image is arranged on the second image. Therefore there is the same effect of the first lens on the origional image ut again.
- Therefore we get double the magnification
What extra lens needs to be taken into account when using a compound microscope?
- Regarded as two converging lenses but..
- We also have the lens in our eye
- SO, the magnification of the first lens, second lens in the eye piece and the eye lens
What is resolution?
The ability of the microscope to distinguish seperate and distinct objects that lie in close proximity under a particular condition of usage
What is necessary in order to receive a clear resolution from a light microscope?
- In order to percieve two object as seperate things. they have to fall onto two different retinal cells in the retina
- If the image is not small enough to fall onto two seperate cells, we cannot distinguish between the two object
How can we overcome the problem of bad resolution (minor) in a top down manner?
- If we know the cells are round then even if we see a cell that looks like 8
- We can understand that the scene is not fully resolved and assume that they are two seperate cells as this shape is not probable
What is numerical aperture?
Is a quantitative value for the angular aperure of the microscope lens, Ernst Karl Abbe (1840-1905)
What is the refractive index (n) and how is this important for numerical aperture?
- The refractive index of the material we are using and the specimen
- Air between the cover slip does not have a high index
- So, we can use immersion (a drop of oil) which improves the refractive index- artificially improving the resolution
What is the equation for numerical aperture?
NA= n x sinalpha
What does a condensor add to a compound microscope?
Allows to increase and decrease the field of illumination and the light path
How do expensive and cheap compound microscopes differ in terms of their objective lens?
- In cheap microscopes when change the objective lens magnification, the focal point changes
- In expensive microscopes, there is the same focal point in different magnifications so don’t have to re-search for the cell when changing the magnification