Abstract
To characterize the optical clearing treatments in human colorectal tissues and possibly to differentiate between treatments of normal and pathological tissues, we have used a simple indirect method derived from Mie scattering theory to estimate the kinetics of the reduced scattering coefficient. A complementary method to estimate the kinetics of the scattering coefficient is also used so that the kinetics of the anisotropy factor and of the refractive index are also calculated. Both methods rely only on the thickness and collimated transmittance measurements made during treatment. The results indicate the expected time dependencies for the optical properties of both tissues: an increase in the refractive index and anisotropy factor and a decrease in the scattering coefficients. The similarity in the kinetics obtained for normal and pathological tissues indicates that optical clearing treatments can be applied also in pathological tissues to produce similar effects. The estimated time dependencies using experimental spectral data in the range from 400 to 1000 nm allowed us to compare the kinetics of the optical properties between different wavelengths. (C) 2018 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

Abstract
With the objective of developing a diagnostic tool, we have used the immersion optical clearing method and studied normal and pathological tissues (cancer, diabetes) under treatment by optical clearing agents (OCAs). In order to quantify pathology status OCA diffusion properties in different tissues were measured. We have demonstrated that free water content in cancerous tissues is higher than in normal.

Abstract
The growth of the Blue Economy has been boosted by a set of traditional and new activities including maritime transportation, fisheries, environmental monitoring, deep sea mining, and inspection missions. These activities are urging for a cost-effective broadband communications solution capable of supporting both above and underwater missions at remote ocean areas, since many of them rely on an ever-increasing number of Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV), Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) and Remote Operated Vehicles (ROV), which need to transmit large amounts of data to shore. The BLUE-COM+ project has considered the usage of helium balloons to increase the antenna height, and overtake the earth curvature and achieve Fresnel zone clearance, combined with the use of sub-GHz frequency bands to enable long range communications. In this paper we present the results obtained in three sea trials. They show that the BLUECOM+ architecture is capable of supporting human and system activities at remote ocean areas by enabling Internet access beyond 50 km from shore, live video conference calls with the quality of experience available on land, and real-time data upload to the cloud by ASVs, AUVs and ROVs using standard access technologies with bitrates above 1 Mbit/s.

Abstract
Developing robust and universal methods for unsupervised segmentation of moving objects in video sequences has proved to be a hard and challenging task. The best solutions are, in general, computationally heavy preventing their use in real-time applications. This research addresses this problem by proposing a robust and computationally efficient method, BMOG, that significantly boosts the performance of the widely used MOG2 method. The complexity of BMOG is kept low, proving its suitability for real-time applications. The proposed solution explores a novel classification mechanism that combines color space discrimination capabilities with hysteresis and a dynamic learning rate for background model update.

Abstract
In this paper, we investigate the optical modulation characteristics of a resonant tunnelling diode (RTD) oscillator. This preliminary work on the first RTD-PD oscillators with an optical window available from the iBROW project demonstrate that this device can effectively be used to accomplish amplitude and frequency modulation with light injection.

Abstract
In this paper, we further explore the concept of phase-conjugated twin waves (PCTW) for nonlinear cancellation in space-division multiplexed (SDM) systems. Previously, we demonstrated that the PCTW technique can successfully provide nonlinear cancellation in SDM systems. In this paper, we investigate the cases where two and four spatial modes are copropagating in a multimode fiber, considering three link lengths (1000, 3200, and 8000 km). Weak-and strong-coupling regimes are also evaluated. Our numerical simulation results show an average performance improvement > 10 dB after a 1000 km transmission link.