Flexible neural probes have been pursued previously to minimize the mechanical mismatch between soft neural tissues and implants and thereby improve long-term performance. However, difficulties with insertion of such probes deep into the brain severely restricts their utility. We describe a solution to this problem using gallium (Ga) in probe construction, taking advantage of the solid-to-liquid phase change of the metal at body temperature and probe shape deformation to provide temperature-dependent control of stiffness over 5 orders of magnitude. Probes in the stiff state were successfully inserted 2 cm-deep into agarose gel "brain phantoms" and into rat brains under cooled conditions where, upon Ga melting, they became ultra soft, flexible, and stretchable *
We present a novel non-iterative method for generating phase-only Fresnel holograms. The intensity image of the source object scene is first down-sampled with uniform grid-cross lattices. A Fresnel hologram is then generated from the intensity and the depth information of the sampled object points. Subsequently, only the phase component of the hologram is preserved, resulting in a pure phase hologram that we call the sampled-phase-only hologram (SPOH). Experimental evaluation reveals that the numerical, as well as the optical reconstructed images of the proposed phase-only hologram derived with our method are of high visual quality. Moreover, the reconstructed optical image is brighter, and less affected by phase noise contamination on the hologram as compared with those generated with existing error-diffusion approaches.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.