Learning structural information is critical for producing an ideal result in retinal image segmentation. Recently, convolutional neural networks have shown a powerful ability to extract effective representations. However, convolutional and pooling operations filter out some useful structural information. In this paper, we propose an Attention Guided Network (AG-Net) to preserve the structural information and guide the expanding operation. In our AG-Net, the guided filter is exploited as a structure sensitive expanding path to transfer structural information from previous feature maps, and an attention block is introduced to exclude the noise and reduce the negative influence of background further. The extensive experiments on two retinal image segmentation tasks (i.e., blood vessel segmentation, optic disc and cup segmentation) demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.This work was done when S. Zhang is intern at CVTE Research. M. Tan (mingkui-tan@scut.edu.cn) and Y. Xu (ywxu@ieee.org) are the corresponding authors.

Nanoparticles camouflaged by red blood cell (RBC) membranes have attracted considerable attention owing to reservation of structure of membrane and surface proteins, endowing prominent cell-specific function including biocompatibility, prolonged circulation lifetime, and reduced reticular endothelial system (RES) uptake ability. Considering the drawbacks of carrier-free nanomedicine including the serious drug burst release, poor stability, and lack of immune escape function, herein we developed and fabricated a novel RBC membranes biomimetic combinational therapeutic system by enveloping the small molecular drug coassemblies of 10-hydroxycamptothecin (10-HCPT) and indocyanine green (ICG) in the RBC membranes for prolonged circulation, controlled drug release, and synergistic chemo-photothermal therapy (PTT). The self-reorganized RBCs@ICG-HCPT nanoparticles (NPs) exhibited a diameter of ∼150 nm with core–shell structure, high drug payload (∼92 wt %), and reduced RES uptake function. Taking advantage of the stealth functionality of RBC membranes, RBCs@ICG-HCPT NPs remarkably enhanced the accumulation at the tumor sites by passive targeting followed by cellular endocytosis. Upon the stimuli of near-infrared laser followed by acidic stimulation, RBCs@ICG-HCPT NPs showed exceptional instability by heat-mediated membrane disruption and pH change, thereby triggering the rapid disassembly and accelerated drug release. Consequently, compared with individual treatment, RBCs@ICG-HCPT NPs under dual-stimuli accomplished highly efficient apoptosis in cancer cells and remarkable ablation of tumors by chemo-PTT. This biomimetic nanoplatform based on carrier-free, small molecular drug coassemblies integrating imaging capacity as a promising theranostic system provides potential for cancer diagnosis and combinational therapy.

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In the study of modern optics, the work of terahertz metamaterial absorbers is mostly multi-band perfect absorbers and ultra-wideband perfect absorbers. In contrast, in practical applications, metamaterial absorbers with adjustable resonance frequency or amplitude play an essential role in many forms. Here, we firstly designed an ultra-wideband terahertz metamaterial perfect absorber, achieving over 99% perfect absorption in the 6.6-8.9 THz range. Secondly, based on the absorber, phase change material VO 2 was added to improve the structure, and three tunable terahertz metamaterial absorbers based on VO 2 were designed, respectively realizing broadband movement and conversion between broadband and multiband. Also, the terahertz absorber with dynamic tuning characteristics can flexibly control the absorption performance, providing an excellent platform for the realization of terahertz filtering, modulation, and so on.INDEX TERMS Broadband, multiband, active tuned, vanadium dioxiderption, high quality factor.