Pericapillary Edema Assessment by Means of the Nailfold Capillaroscopy and Laser Scanning Microscopy

Clinical features and potential markers of disease in idiopathic non-histaminergic angioedema, a real-life study

Idiopathic non-histaminergic acquired angioedema (InH-AAE) is a rare disease, with unknown etiology and pathogenesis, characterized by recurrent clinical manifestations and resistance to antihistamines and corticosteroids. We aim to evaluate clinical features and potential markers of disease in an Italian cohort of patients with InH-AAE. We enrolled 26 patients diagnosed with InH-AAE. Information about clinical features, treatments, routine laboratory investigations, immunological and genetic tests were collected. We assessed plasma levels of complement components, angiogenic and lymphangiogenic mediators, proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines, and activity of phospholipases A2. Finally, patients underwent nailfold videocapillaroscopy (NVC); both quantitative and qualitative capillaroscopic parameters were analyzed. Plasma levels of VEGFs were similar in healthy controls and in InH-AAE patients. ANGPT1 was decreased in InH-AAE patients compared to controls while ANGPT2 was similar to controls. Interestingly, the ANGPT2/ANGPT1 ratio (an index of vascular permeability) was increased in InH-AAE patients compared to controls. sPLA2 activity, elevated in patients with C1-INH-HAE, showed differences also when measured in InH-AAE patients. TNF-α concentration was higher in InH-AAE patients than in healthy controls, conversely, the levels of CXCL8, and IL-6 were similar in both groups. At the NVC, the capillary loops mainly appeared short and tortuous in InH-AAE patients. InH-AAE represents a diagnostic challenge. Due to the potential life-threatening character of this condition, a prompt identification of the potentially bradykinin-mediated forms is crucial. A better comprehension of the mechanism involved in InH-AAE would also lead to the development of new therapeutic approaches to improve life quality of patients affected by this disabling disease.

Visually Hidden, Self-Assembled Porous Polymers for Optical Physically Unclonable Functions

Owing to the advancement of security technologies, several encryption methods have been proposed. Despite such efforts, forging artifices is financially and somatically becoming a constraint for individuals and society (e.g., imprinting replicas of luxury goods or directly life-connected medicines). Physically unclonable functions (PUFs) are one of the promising solutions to address these personal and social issues. The unreplicability of PUFs is a crucial factor for high security levels. Here, this study proposes a visually hidden and self-assembled porous polymer (VSPP) as a tag for optical PUF systems. The VSPP has virtues in terms of wavelength dependency, lens-free compact PUF system, and simple/affordable fabrication processes (i.e., spin coating and annealing). The VSPP consists of an external saturated surface, which covers the inner structures, and an internally abundant porous layer, which triggers stochastic multiple Mie scattering with wavelength dependency. We theoretically and experimentally validate the unobservability of the VSPP and the uniqueness of optical responses by image sensors. Finally, we establish a wavelength-dependent PUF system by using the following three components: solid-state light sources, a VSPP tag, and an image sensor. The captured raw images by the sensor serve as "seed" for unique bit sequences. The robustness of our system is successfully confirmed in terms of bit uniformity (∼0.5), intra/interdevice Hamming distances (∼0.04/∼0.5), and randomness (using NIST test).

In vivo sensing of cutaneous edema: A comparative study of diffuse reflectance, Raman spectroscopy and multispectral imaging

Quantitative noninvasive assessment of water content in tissues is important for biomedicine. Optical spectroscopy is potentially capable of solving this problem; however, its applicability for clinical diagnostics remains questionable. The presented study compares diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and multispectral imaging in the characterization of cutaneous edema. The source-detector geometries for each method are selected based on Monte Carlo simulations results to detect the signal from the dermis. Then, the kinetics of the edema development is studied for two models. All methods demonstrate synchronous trends for histamine-induced edema: The water content reaches a maximum of 1 hour after histamine application and then gradually decreases. For the venous occlusion, a 51% increase in water content is observed with Raman spectroscopy. The differences in water content estimation by three methods are explained based on the light propagation model. The obtained results are essential for introducing quantitative optical water measurement technology to the clinics.