Manikuntala Mukhopadhyay

Bio: Manikuntala Mukhopadhyay is an academic researcher from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. The author has contributed to research in topics: Lignocellulosic biomass & Microcrystalline cellulose. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 7 publications receiving 17 citations. Previous affiliations of Manikuntala Mukhopadhyay include University of Calcutta.

Surface property induced morphological alterations of human erythrocytes.

Abstract: Microscopic investigations of any abnormality associated with erythrocyte/red blood cell morphology constitute an important segment of the age-old peripheral smear test. Though the test is conducted on a glass slide, the effect of glass and similar other solid substrates on erythrocyte morphology remained majorly unexplored. In the first of its kind investigation, we have outlined the effect of varying the substrate surface potential on erythrocyte morphology. Such a substrate induced phenomenon has been quantified for two distinctly different drying configurations (droplets and film) upon systematically varying the cell concentration. Experimental results and supporting theoretical analysis unambiguously show the surface potential of the solid substrate to be the most influential parameter in the process of morphological alteration. The findings of the present investigation may be utilized to formulate an error-free protocol for the baseline peripheral smear test of hematological diagnosis.

Synthesis, Characterization and Performance Evaluation of a Solid Acid Catalyst Prepared from Coconut Shell for Hydrolyzing Pretreated Acacia nilotica Heartwood

Abstract: The present investigation aims to develop a solid acid-type heterogeneous catalyst for the hydrolysis of biomass using coconut shell, an inexpensive and easily available material, as yet unexplored in this field. Catalyst characterization by scanning electron micrography, X-ray diffraction, FTIR spectroscopy and nitrogen adsorption has been carried out. Pretreated sawdust from Acacia nilotica heartwood and microcrystalline cellulose were hydrolyzed in aqueous medium using the developed catalyst. Maximum sugar yields of 91% and 93% were obtained on hydrolysis of pretreated sawdust and microcrystalline cellulose, respectively. The principal hydrolysis product was glucose with a selectivity of 98%. These results highlight the potential of the developed catalyst for use in industrial biomass saccharification.

Fractal Dimension of Erythrocyte Membranes: A Highly Useful Precursor for Rapid Morphological Assay.

Abstract: Morphology of erythrocyte membrane has been recognized as an alternative biomarker of several patho-physiological states. Numerous attempts have been made to upgrade the existing method of primitive manual counting, particularly exploring the light scattering properties of erythrocyte. All the techniques are at best semi-empirical and heavily rely on the effectiveness of the statistical correlations. Precisely, this is due to the lack of a non-empirical scale of the so-called “morphological scores”. In this article, fractal dimension of erythrocyte membrane has been used to formulate a suitable scoring scale. Subsequently, the rapid experimental output of flow-cytometry has been functionally related to the mean morphological quantifier of the whole cell population via an optimum neural network model (R2 = 0.98). Moreover, the fractal dimension has been further demonstrated to be an important parameter in early detection of an abnormal patho-physiological state, even without any noticeable poikilocytic transformation in micrometric domain.

Detection of Thalassaemia Carriers by Automated Feature Extraction of Dried Blood Drops

Abstract: Thalassaemia, triggered by defects in the globin genes, is one of the most common monogenic diseases. The beta-thalassaemia carrier state is clinically asymptomatic, thus, making it onerous to diagnose. The current gold standard technique is implausible to be used for onsite carrier detection as the method necessitates expensive instruments, skilled manpower and time. In this study, we have tried to classify the carriers from the healthy samples based on their blood droplet drying patterns using image analysis based tools and subsequently develop an in-house program for automated classification of the same. This automatic, rapid, less laborious and cost-effective technique will significantly increase the total number of carriers that are screened for thalassaemia per year in the country, thus, reducing the burden in the state run advanced health facilities.

Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing

Abstract: Most of the past document image watermarking schemes focus on providing same level of integrity and copyright protection for information present in the source document image. However, in a document image the information contents possess various levels of sensitivity. Each level of sensitivity needs different type of protection and this demands multiple watermarking techniques. In this paper, a novel intelligent multiple watermarking techniques are proposed. The sensitivity of the information content of a block is based on the homogeneity and relative energy contribution parameters. Appropriate watermarking scheme is applied based on sensitivity classification of the block. Experiments are conducted exhaustively on documents. Experimental results reveal the accurate identification of the sensitivity of information content in the block. The results reveal that multiple watermarking schemes has reduced the amount of data to be embedded and consequently improved perceptual quality of the watermarked image.

Hemocompatibility investigation and improvement of near-infrared persistent luminescent nanoparticle ZnGa2O4:Cr3+ by surface PEGylation

Abstract: Although near-infrared persistent luminescent nanoparticles are widely used in optical imaging of tumors and grafted cells, there is no report on the behavior of chromium-doped zinc gallate (ZnGa2O4:Cr3+,ZGC) nanoparticles in contact with blood. In this work, monodisperse ZGC NPs with a size of about 10 nm usually used in bioimaging were synthesized by a hydrothermal method. We have evaluated the effect of ZGC NPs on blood in terms of hemolysis, and erythrocyte morphology, erythrocyte aggregation, coagulation, thrombosis and complement system activation. We improved ZGC NP blood compatibility by functionalizing them with hydrophilic polyethylene glycol (PEG) polymers. Experimental results demonstrate that the pristine ZGC NPs at a concentration of 0.5 mg mL−1 induce hemolysis, erythrocyte morphology changes and delayed clotting, whereas no significant difference is observed with PEGylated ZGC (ZGC-PEG). However, neither ZGC nor ZGC-PEG caused thrombosis and inflammatory complement activation, which provides a basic foundation for in vivo imaging.

A deep network designed for segmentation and classification of leukemia using fusion of the transfer learning models

Abstract: White blood cells (WBCs) are a portion of the immune system which fights against germs. Leukemia is the most common blood cancer which may lead to death. It occurs due to the production of a large number of immature WBCs in the bone marrow that destroy healthy cells. To overcome the severity of this disease, it is necessary to diagnose the shapes of immature cells at an early stage that ultimately reduces the modality rate of the patients. Recently different types of segmentation and classification methods are presented based upon deep-learning (DL) models but still have some limitations. This research aims to propose a modified DL approach for the accurate segmentation of leukocytes and their classification. The proposed technique includes two core steps: preprocessing-based classification and segmentation. In preprocessing, synthetic images are generated using a generative adversarial network (GAN) and normalized by color transformation. The optimal deep features are extracted from each blood smear image using pretrained deep models i.e., DarkNet-53 and ShuffleNet. More informative features are selected by principal component analysis (PCA) and fused serially for classification. The morphological operations based on color thresholding with the deep semantic method are utilized for leukemia segmentation of classified cells. The classification accuracy achieved with ALL-IDB and LISC dataset is 100% and 99.70% for the classification of leukocytes i.e., blast, no blast, basophils, neutrophils, eosinophils, lymphocytes, and monocytes, respectively. Whereas semantic segmentation achieved 99.10% and 98.60% for average and global accuracy, respectively. The proposed method achieved outstanding outcomes as compared to the latest existing research works.

Activated carbon preparation from eucalyptus wood chips using continuous carbonization-steam activation process in a batch intermittent rotary kiln.

Abstract: The production of activated carbon from eucalyptus wood chips by steam activation in a 2000 kg batch intermittent rotary kiln with continuous carbonization-steam activation process conducted at 500 °C to 700 °C was studied. The activated carbon products were characterized by FTIR, SEM-EDS, Raman spectroscopy, and BET analysis. Percent yields, iodine number, and methylene blue number of the produced activated carbon materials were measured as well. It was shown that the percent yields of the activated carbon materials made in the temperature range from 500 to 700 °C are 21.63 ± 1.52%-31.79 ± 0.70% with capacities of 518-737 mg I2/g and 70.11-96.93 mg methylene blue/g. The BET surface area and micropore volume of the activated carbons are 426.8125-870.4732 m2/g and 0.102390-0.215473 cm3/g, respectively. The steam used in the process could create various oxygen containing surface functional groups such as -CO and -COC groups. In addition, it could also increase the amorphous nature of the activated carbon product. These properties of the activated carbon products are increased with increasing steam activation temperature from 500 to 700 °C. As a result, the activated carbon materials produced at activation temperatures of 600 °C and 700 °C exhibit higher adsorption.