Unconscious Perception of Vernier Offsets.

The comparison between conscious and unconscious perception is a cornerstone of consciousness science. However, most studies reporting above-chance discrimination of unseen stimuli do not control for criterion biases when assessing awareness. We tested whether observers can discriminate subjectively invisible offsets of Vernier stimuli when visibility is probed using a bias-free task. To reduce visibility, stimuli were either backward masked or presented for very brief durations (1-3 milliseconds) using a modern-day Tachistoscope. We found some behavioral indicators of perception without awareness, and yet, no conclusive evidence thereof. To seek more decisive proof, we simulated a series of Bayesian observer models, including some that produce visibility judgements alongside type-1 judgements. Our data are best accounted for by observers with slightly suboptimal conscious access to sensory evidence. Overall, the stimuli and visibility manipulations employed here induced mild instances of blindsight-like behavior, making them attractive candidates for future investigation of this phenomenon.

Coherent X-ray-optical control of nuclear excitons.

Coherent control of quantum dynamics is key to a multitude of fundamental studies and applications1. In the visible or longer-wavelength domains, near-resonant light fields have become the primary tool with which to control electron dynamics2. Recently, coherent control in the extreme-ultraviolet range was demonstrated3, with a few-attosecond temporal resolution of the phase control. At hard-X-ray energies (above 5-10 kiloelectronvolts), Mössbauer nuclei feature narrow nuclear resonances due to their recoilless absorption and emission of light, and spectroscopy of these resonances is widely used to study the magnetic, structural and dynamical properties of matter4,5. It has been shown that the power and scope of Mössbauer spectroscopy can be greatly improved using various control techniques6-16. However, coherent control of atomic nuclei using suitably shaped near-resonant X-ray fields remains an open challenge. Here we demonstrate such control, and use the tunable phase between two X-ray pulses to switch the nuclear exciton dynamics between coherent enhanced excitation and coherent enhanced emission. We present a method of shaping single pulses delivered by state-of-the-art X-ray facilities into tunable double pulses, and demonstrate a temporal stability of the phase control on the few-zeptosecond timescale. Our results unlock coherent optical control for nuclei, and pave the way for nuclear Ramsey spectroscopy17 and spin-echo-like techniques, which should not only advance nuclear quantum optics18, but also help to realize X-ray clocks and frequency standards19. In the long term, we envision time-resolved studies of nuclear out-of-equilibrium dynamics, which is a long-standing challenge in Mössbauer science20.

Time-Resolved sub-Ångström Metrology by Temporal Phase Interferometry near X-Ray Resonances of Nuclei.

We introduce an analytical phase-reconstruction principle that retrieves atomic scale motion via time-domain interferometry. The approach is based on a resonant interaction with high-frequency light and does not require temporal resolution on the time scale of the resonance period. It is thus applicable to hard x rays and γ rays for measurements of extremely small spatial displacements or relative-frequency changes. Here, it is applied to retrieve the temporal phase of a 14.4 keV emission line of an ^{57}Fe sample, which corresponds to a spatial translation of this sample. The small wavelength of this transition (λ=0.86 Å) allows for determining the motion of the emitter on sub-Ångström length and nanosecond timescales.

Synthesis of CT images from digital body phantoms using CycleGAN.

PURPOSE: The potential of medical image analysis with neural networks is limited by the restricted availability of extensive data sets. The incorporation of synthetic training data is one approach to bypass this shortcoming, as synthetic data offer accurate annotations and unlimited data size. METHODS: We evaluated eleven CycleGAN for the synthesis of computed tomography (CT) images based on XCAT body phantoms. The image quality was assessed in terms of anatomical accuracy and realistic noise properties. We performed two studies exploring various network and training configurations as well as a task-based adaption of the corresponding loss function. RESULTS: The CycleGAN using the Res-Net architecture and three XCAT input slices achieved the best overall performance in the configuration study. In the task-based study, the anatomical accuracy of the generated synthetic CTs remained high ([Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]). At the same time, the generated noise texture was close to real data with a noise power spectrum correlation coefficient of [Formula: see text]. Simultaneously, we observed an improvement in annotation accuracy of 65% when using the dedicated loss function. The feasibility of a combined training on both real and synthetic data was demonstrated in a blood vessel segmentation task (dice similarity coefficient [Formula: see text]). CONCLUSION: CT synthesis using CycleGAN is a feasible approach to generate realistic images from simulated XCAT phantoms. Synthetic CTs generated with a task-based loss function can be used in addition to real data to improve the performance of segmentation networks.