Farnoud Kazemzadeh

AN ENERGETIC AGN OUTBURST POWERED BY A RAPIDLY SPINNING SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE OR AN ACCRETING ULTRAMASSIVE BLACK HOLE

Powering the 1062 erg nuclear outburst in the MS0735.6+7421 cluster central galaxy by accretion with a 10% mass-to-energy conversion efficiency implies that its putative supermassive black hole (SMBH) grew by ~6 × 108 M ☉ over the past 100 Myr. Guided by data at several wavelengths, we place upper limits on the amount of cold gas and star formation near the nucleus of <109 M ☉ and <2 M ☉ yr–1, respectively. These limits imply that an implausibly large fraction of the preexisting cold gas in the inner several kpc must have been consumed by its SMBH at the rate of ~3-5 M ☉ yr–1 during the past 100 Myr while leaving no trace of star formation. Such a high accretion rate would be difficult to maintain by stellar accretion or the Bondi mechanism, unless the black hole mass approaches 1011 M ☉. Furthermore, its feeble nuclear luminosities in the UV, I, and X-ray bands compared to its enormous mechanical power are inconsistent with rapid accretion onto a ~5 × 109 M ☉ black hole. We suggest instead that the active galactic nucleus (AGN) outburst is powered by angular momentum released from a rapidly spinning black hole. The rotational energy and power available from a spinning black hole are consistent with the cavity and shock energetics inferred from X-ray observations. A maximally spinning 109 M ☉ black hole contains enough rotational energy, ~1062 erg, to quench a cooling flow over its lifetime and to contribute significantly to the excess entropy found in the hot atmospheres of groups and clusters. Two modes of AGN feedback may be quenching star formation in elliptical galaxies centered in cooling halos at late times. An accretion mode that operates in gas-rich systems, and a spin mode operating at modest accretion rates. The spin conjecture may be avoided in MS0735 by appealing to Bondi accretion onto a central black hole whose mass greatly exceeds 1010 M ☉. The host galaxys unusually large 3.8 kpc stellar core radius (light deficit) may witness the presence of an ultramassive black hole.

Eight Hundred New Candidates for Globular Clusters in NGC?5128 (Centaurus A)

We have used new wide-field imaging with the Magellan IMACS camera to search for globular cluster (GC) candidates around NGC 5128, the nearest giant E galaxy. The imaging data are in the B and R broadband filters and cover a 1.55 deg 2 field centered on the galaxy, corresponding to an area about 90 × 90 kpc 2 at the distance of NGC 5128. All the fields were taken under exceptionally high-quality seeing conditions (FWHM = 0. �� 4–0. 5i nR). Using this material we are able, for the first time in the literature, to construct a homogeneous list of GC candidates covering a wide span of the NGC 5128 halo and unusually free of field contaminants (foreground stars and faint background galaxies). Selecting the measured objects by color, magnitude, ellipticity, and profile size gives us a final catalog of 833 new high-quality GC candidates brighter than R = 21 (0.8 mag fainter than the standard GC luminosity function turnover point). The measured positions have better than 0. 2 precision in both coordinates. This list can be used as the basis for spectroscopic follow-up, leading to a more comprehensive kinematic and dynamic study of the halo.

Feasibility of long-distance heart rate monitoring using transmittance photoplethysmographic imaging (PPGI).

Photoplethysmography (PPG) devices are widely used for monitoring cardiovascular function. However, these devices require skin contact, which restricts their use to at-rest short-term monitoring. Photoplethysmographic imaging (PPGI) has been recently proposed as a non-contact monitoring alternative by measuring blood pulse signals across a spatial region of interest. Existing systems operate in reflectance mode, many of which are limited to short-distance monitoring and are prone to temporal changes in ambient illumination. This paper is the first study to investigate the feasibility of long-distance non-contact cardiovascular monitoring at the supermeter level using transmittance PPGI. For this purpose, a novel PPGI system was designed at the hardware and software level. Temporally coded illumination (TCI) is proposed for ambient correction, and a signal processing pipeline is proposed for PPGI signal extraction. Experimental results show that the processing steps yielded a substantially more pulsatile PPGI signal than the raw acquired signal, resulting in statistically significant increases in correlation to ground-truth PPG in both short- and long-distance monitoring. The results support the hypothesis that long-distance heart rate monitoring is feasible using transmittance PPGI, allowing for new possibilities of monitoring cardiovascular function in a non-contact manner.

Multispectral Stereoscopic Imaging Device: Simultaneous Multiview Imaging From the Visible to the Near-Infrared

We have designed a hand-held imaging device which is capable of capturing images of multiple spectral bands, spanning the visible to the near-infrared, as well as imaging multiple perspective views of an object simultaneously on one detector. This concept utilizes a set of mirrors positioned obliquely to the principle axis of the imaging device that present different perspective views, of a target, and simultaneously bandpass filters those views before the light enters the device. In its current state, our instrument is capable of simultaneously imaging nine independent spectral bands and three different perspective views. The device allows for measurement of multispectral properties of different material enabling multispectroscopic science as demonstrated by studying the separability of four types of black ink. Exploiting the stereoscopic imaging capability of the device, we are able to construct 3-D surface features of a target.

Reconstruction of compressive multispectral sensing data using a multilayered conditional random field approach

The prevalence of compressive sensing is continually growing in all facets of imaging science. Com- pressive sensing allows for the capture and reconstruction of an entire signal from a sparse (under- sampled), yet sufficient, set of measurements that is representative of the target being observed. This compressive sensing strategy reduces the duration of the data capture, the size of the acquired data, and the cost of the imaging hardware as well as complexity while preserving the necessary underlying information. Compressive sensing systems require the accompaniment of advanced re- construction algorithms to reconstruct complete signals from the sparse measurements made. Here, a new reconstruction algorithm is introduced specifically for the reconstruction of compressive multispectral (MS) sensing data that allows for high-quality reconstruction from acquisitions at sub-Nyquist rates. We propose a multilayered conditional random field (MCRF) model, which extends upon the CRF model by incorporating two joint layers of certainty and estimated states. The proposed algorithm treats the reconstruction of each spectral channel as a MCRF given the sparse MS measurements. Since the observations are incomplete, the MCRF incorporates an extra layer determining the certainty of the measurements. The proposed MCRF approach was evaluated using simulated compressive MS data acquisitions, and is shown to enable fast acquisition of MS sensing data with reduced imaging hardware cost and complexity.

Bayesian-based aberration correction and numerical diffraction for improved lensfree on-chip microscopy of biological specimens

Lensfree on-chip microscopy is an emerging imaging technique that can be used to visualize and study biological specimens without the need for imaging lens systems. Important issues that can limit the performance of lensfree on-chip microscopy include interferometric aberrations, acquisition noise, and image reconstruction artifacts. In this study, we introduce a Bayesian-based method for performing aberration correction and numerical diffraction that accounts for all three of these issues to improve the effective numerical aperture (NA) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the reconstructed microscopic image. The proposed method was experimentally validated using the USAF resolution target as well as real waterborne Anabaena flos-aquae samples, demonstrating improvements in NA by ∼25% over the standard method, and improvements in SNR of 2.8 and 8.2 dB in the reconstructed image when compared to the reconstructed images produced using the standard method and a maximum likelihood estimation method, respectively.

Virtual spectral multiplexing for applications in in-situ imaging microscopy of transient phenomena

Multispectral sensing is specifically designed to provide quantitative spectral information about various materials or scenes. Using spectral information, various properties of objects can be measured and analysed. Microscopy, the observing and imaging of objects at the micron- or nano-scale, is one application where multispectral sensing can be advantageous, as many fields of science and research that use microscopy would benefit from observing a specimen in multiple wavelengths. Multispectral microscopy is available, but often requires the operator of the device to switch filters which is a labor intensive process. Furthermore, the need for filter switching makes such systems particularly limiting in cases where the sample contains live species that are constantly moving or exhibit transient phenomena. Direct methods for capturing multispectral data of a live sample simultaneously can also be challenging for microscopy applications as it requires an elaborate optical systems design which uses beamsplitters and a number of detectors proportional to the number of bands sought after. Such devices can therefore be quite costly to build and difficult to maintain, particularly for microscopy. In this paper, we present the concept of virtual spectral demultiplexing imaging (VSDI) microscopy for low-cost in-situ multispectral microscopy of transient phenomena. In VSDI microscopy, the spectral response of a color detector in the microscope is characterized and virtual spectral demultiplexing is performed on the simultaneously-acquired broadband detector measurements based on the developed spectral characterization model to produce microscopic imagery at multiple wavelengths. The proposed VSDI microscope was used to observe colorful nanowire arrays at various wavelengths simultaneously to illustrate its efficacy.

Sparse Reconstruction of Compressive Sensing Multi-Spectral Data Using an Inter-Spectral Multi-Layered Conditional Random Field Model

The broadband spectrum contains significantly more information than what the human eye can detect, with different wavelengths providing unique information about the intrinsic properties of an object. Recently, compressive sensing-based strategies for multi-spectral imaging via wavelength filtering at the pixel level on the imaging detector have been proposed for simultaneous acquisition of multi-spectral imaging data greatly reducing the acquisition times. To utilize such compressive sensing strategies for multi-spectral imaging, strong reconstruction algorithms that can reconstruct dense multi-spectral image cubes from the sparse compressively sensed observations are required. This paper proposes a comprehensive inter-spectral multi-layered conditional random field (IS-MCRF) sparse reconstruction framework for multi-spectral compressively sensed data captured using such acquisition strategies. The IS-MCRF framework leverages the information between neighboring spectral bands to better utilize the available information for reconstruction. The proposed framework was evaluated using compressively sensed multi-spectral acquisitions ranging from visible to near infrared spectral bands obtained by a simulated compressive sensing-based multi-spectral imaging system. Results show noticeable improvement over the existing sparse reconstruction techniques for compressive sensing-based multi-spectral imaging systems in preserving spatial and spectral fidelity.

Multi-polarimetric textural distinctiveness for outdoor robotic saliency detection

Mobile robots that rely on vision, for navigation and object detection, use saliency approaches to identify a set of potential candidates to recognize. The state of the art in saliency detection for mobile robotics often rely upon visible light imaging, using conventional camera setups, to distinguish an object against its surroundings based on factors such as feature compactness, heterogeneity and/or homogeneity. We are demonstrating a novel multi- polarimetric saliency detection approach which uses multiple measured polarization states of a scene. We leverage the light-material interaction known as Fresnel reflections to extract rotationally invariant multi-polarimetric textural representations to then train a high dimensional sparse texture model. The multi-polarimetric textural distinctiveness is characterized using a conditional probability framework based on the sparse texture model which is then used to determine the saliency at each pixel of the scene. It was observed that through the inclusion of additional polarized states into the saliency analysis, we were able to compute noticeably improved saliency maps in scenes where objects are difficult to distinguish from their background due to color intensity similarities between the object and its surroundings.

Laser interference fringe tomography: a novel 3D imaging technique for pathology

Laser interference fringe tomography (LIFT) is within the class of optical imaging devices designed for in vivo and ex vivo medical imaging applications. LIFT is a very simple and cost-effective three-dimensional imaging device with performance rivaling some of the leading three-dimensional imaging devices used for histology. Like optical coherence tomography (OCT), it measures the reflectivity as a function of depth within a sample and is capable of producing three-dimensional images from optically scattering media. LIFT has the potential capability to produce high spectral resolution, full-color images. The optical design of LIFT along with the planned iterations for improvements and miniaturization are presented and discussed in addition to the theoretical concepts and preliminary imaging results of the device.