Visual Appearance Research Articles

Physical, colour, and mechanical properties of pearls (citrus caviar) from three finger lime (Citrus australasica) varieties: Implications for economic value, quality grading, and benchmarking

Citrus australasica, the Australian finger lime or caviar lime have garnered interest both in culinary and scientific communities. Despite extensive studies on their metabolomic and volatilomic profiles, research on the physical properties of finger lime pearls, especially their diameter, colour, and mechanical properties, remains limited. Understanding these attributes is crucial for quality assessment, consumer preference, and marketability in the food industry. This study aims to investigate the diameter, visual appearance, and mechanical properties of finger lime pearls from three different varieties (‘Champagne Red’, ‘Emerald’, and ‘Chartreuse’), comparing them with similar foods and assessing their implications for culinary use and market value. Colour properties were analysed using the CIELAB system, and mechanical properties were assessed through texture analysis, focusing on bursting strength and strain. Finger lime pearl diameters ranged between 1.62 and 3.60 mm, aligning with sizes of comparative foods. Colour analysis revealed distinct differences among varieties. Mechanical properties, particularly bursting strength, and strain, varied significantly across varieties, with ‘Champagne Red’ and ‘Chartreuse’ showing higher bursting strengths. These properties suggest different culinary applications and potential for a grading system based on sensory experience. The study highlights the importance of physical and mechanical properties in determining the quality and marketability of finger lime pearls. It introduces a novel framework for assessing these attributes, suggesting that finger lime varieties can be differentiated and graded for culinary use based on pearl diameter, colour, and mechanical properties. This research lays the groundwork for future sensory-based studies and the development of quality grading systems for finger limes.

Instructional Videos for Students in Dental Medicine: Rules of Design and Correlations with Their Habits as Internet Consumers.

We investigated the opinions of a sample of 551 students from four medical universities in Romania, in order to identify the students' preferred characteristics in instructional videos, both globally and comparatively on genders and age groups and also according to their general preferences for using internet services. We used univariate (hypothesis testing) and multivariate (two-step clustering) data analysis techniques and revealed three clusters of students, primarily determined by their perceptions of the visual appearance of the instructional videos. The structure of the clusters by gender and age group was relatively similar, but we recorded differences associated with the students' expressed preferences for certain internet services compared to others. The first identified cluster (35.4% of the cases) contains students who prefer instructional videos to contain images used only for aesthetic purposes and to fill the gaps; they use internet services mainly for communication. The second cluster of students (34.8%) prefers videos designed as practical lessons, using explanatory drawings and diagrams drawn at the same time as the explanations; they also use internet services mainly for communication. The last cluster of students (29.8%) prefer videos designed as PowerPoint presentations, with animated pictures, diagrams, and drawings; they are slightly younger than the others and use internet services mainly for information and communication, but also for domestic facilities. The students' preferences for certain features of instructional videos depend not only on gender and age but are also related to their developmental background and general opinions about modern technologies.

Surgical treatment of cystic pituitary adenomas: literature-based definitions and postoperative outcomes.

To survey the applied definitions of 'cystic' among pituitary adenomas and evaluate whether postoperative outcomes differ relative to non-cystic counterparts. A literature search and meta-analysis was performed using PRISMA guidelines. Studies were eligible if novel data were reported regarding the applied definition of 'cystic' and postoperative outcomes among cases of surgically treated pituitary adenomas. Data were pooled with random effects meta-analysis models into cohorts based on the applied definition of 'cystic'. Categorical meta-regressions were used to investigate differences between cohorts. Among studies comparing cystic and non-cystic pituitary adenomas, meta-analysis models were applied to determine the Odds Ratio [95% Confidence Interval]. Statistical analyses were performed using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA, 4.0), with a priori significance defined as P < 0.05. Ten studies were eligible yielding 283 patients with cystic pituitary adenomas. The definitions of 'cystic' mainly varied between the visual appearance of cystic components on preoperative magnetic resonance imaging and a volumetric definition requiring 50% or greater of tumor volume exhibiting cystic components. Tumor diameter was seldom reported with an associated standard deviation/error, limiting meta-analyses. When the data were pooled in accordance with the definition applied, there were no significant differences in the rates of gross total resection (P = 0.830), endocrinologic remission (P = 0.563), and tumor recurrence (P = 0.320). Meta-analyses on studies comparing cystic versus non-cystic pituitary adenomas indicated no significant difference in the rates of gross total resection (P = 0.729), endocrinologic remission (P = 0.857), and tumor recurrence (P = 0.465). Despite some individual studies describing a significant influence of pituitary adenoma texture on postoperative outcomes, meta-analyses revealed no such differences between cystic and non-cystic pituitary adenomas. This discrepancy may be explained in part by the inconsistent definition of 'cystic' and between-group differences in tumor size. A notion of a field-standard definition of 'cystic' among pituitary adenomas should be established to facilitate inter-study comparisons.

3D food printing: Technological advances, personalization and future challenges in the food industry

3D food printing is an emerging technology that offers a wide range of innovative applications in the food industry. This study provides an analysis of 3D food printing, focusing on its technological development, customization and design possibilities, and future challenges and opportunities, such as its sustainability in the today's world. Through a literature review, the applications of this technology in various fields, including space exploration, health, and catering, are examined. Complemented by a field study based on interviews with chefs, gastronomy experts, and nutritionists, the study aims to understand their evaluations and opinions on 3D food printing. This has enabled a SWOT analysis and a bivariate analysis of contingency tables, correlations, and means comparison test to determine if there are similarities or differences in how they assess the flavour, texture, nutritional value, and visual appearance of 3D printed food. The conclusions indicate that perceptions of the characteristics of 3D printed foods vary significantly among chefs, gastronomy experts, and nutritionists. Nutritionists and gastronomy experts tend to have more similar perceptions, while chefs differ more in their sensory and aesthetic evaluations. The study also discusses technical challenges, consumer acceptance, food safety, and logistical issues. Finally, it reflects on the future of 3D food printing, considering ongoing research and ethical and environmental implications. This article aims to provide a comprehensive view of 3D food printing and its potential impact on the food industry.

Microstructural characterization of bimodal composite metal foams under compression with machine learning

Cellular materials are gaining popularity in today’s major sectors. The aim is to develop high-performance materials to meet customer and application demands. This study revolves around the beginning of the failure; computed tomography and statistical image analysis assisted with machine learning were employed to quantitatively characterize the occurring processes within the structure at the beginning of the well-known plateau effect. Simple techniques (e.g., easily obtainable shape parameters, forest decision, 2D image slices) were employed to sort the structural elements into seven classes based on their visual appearances. The presented method can provide additional information about the fracture mode of the different foams, possibly applying/extending them for other types of closed-cell (composite or not) foams.

Non-invasive spectroscopic analyses of M. E. Chevreul’s colour plates: shedding new light on 19th century colour theory representation

During the early 19th century, colour’s theories flourished. In this context, Michel-Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889) developed a three-dimensional hemispherical colour space, reproduced and used for several decades by manufacturers, scientists, artists, architects, gardeners and designers, among others, to easily identify and classify colours. Despite the major influence and variety of chromatic spaces created by M. E. Chevreul, they have been the subject of a few scientific studies until now. This study will provide new information on the evolution of the printing technique, the materiality and the visual appearance of six different colour circles printed in 1847, 1855, 1861 and 1864. A dedicated analytical methodology was implemented combining visible and near-infrared reflectance imaging, X-ray fluorescence, Raman, short-wave infrared fibre optic reflectance and mid-infrared Fourier transform spectroscopies. This material identification revealed the coexistence of newly synthetized inorganic pigments, such as lead chromate, Prussian blue or Emerald/Scheele green, with established organic and inorganic pigments, such as cochineal lake, vermilion or minium. This study revealed a temporal evolution of the printing technique that leads to an improved colour representation.

Layer-Wise External Attention by Well-Localized Attention Map for Efficient Deep Anomaly Detection

The external attention mechanism offers a promising approach to enhance image anomaly detection (Hayakawa et al., in: IMPROVE, pp. 100-–110, 2023). Nevertheless, the effectiveness of this method is contingent upon the judicious selection of an intermediate layer with external attention. In this study, we performed a comprehensive series of experiments to clarify the mechanisms through which external attention improves detection performance. We assessed the performance of the LEA-Net (Hayakawa et al., in: IMPROVE, pp. 100–110, 2023), which implements layer-wise external attention, using MVTec AD and Plant Village datasets. The detection performances of the LEA-Net were compared with that of the baseline model under different anomaly maps generated by three unsupervised approaches. In addition, we investigated the relationship between the detection performance of LEA-Net and the selection of an attention point, which means an intermediate layer where external attention is applied. The findings reveal that the synergy between the dataset and the generated anomaly map influenced the effectiveness of the LEA-Net. For poorly localized anomaly maps, the selection of the attention point becomes a pivotal factor in determining detection efficiency. At shallow attention points, a well-localized attention map successfully notably improves the detection performance. For deeper attention points, the overall intensity of the attention map is essential; this intensity can be substantially amplified by layer-wise external attention, even for a low-intensity anomaly map. Overall, the results suggest that for layer-wise external attention, the positional attributes of anomalies hold greater significance than the overall intensity or visual appearance of the anomaly map.

Progress in Multisensory Synergistic Salt Reduction.

Excessive salt intake, primarily from sodium chloride prevalent in modern food processing, poses a significant public health risk associated with hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and stroke. Researchers worldwide are exploring approaches to reduce salt consumption without compromising food flavor. One promising method is to enhance salty taste perception using multisensory synergies, leveraging gustatory, olfactory, auditory, visual, tactile and trigeminal senses to decrease salt intake while preserving food taste. This review provides a comprehensive overview of salt usage in foods, mechanisms of salty taste perception and evaluation methods for saltiness. Various strategies for reducing salt consumption while maintaining food flavor are examined, with existing salt reduction methods' advantages and limitations being critically analyzed. A particular emphasis is placed on exploring the mechanisms and potential of multisensory synergy in salt reduction. Taste interactions, olfactory cues, auditory stimulation, visual appearance and tactile sensations in enhancing saltiness perception are discussed, offering insights into developing nutritious, appealing low-sodium foods. Furthermore, challenges in current research are highlighted, and future directions for effective salt reduction strategies to promote public health are proposed. This review aims to establish a scientific foundation for creating healthier, flavorful low-sodium food options that meet consumer preferences and wellness needs.

Perceptual dimensions of wood materials.

Materials exhibit an extraordinary range of visual appearances. Characterizing and quantifying appearance is important not only for basic research on perceptual mechanisms but also for computer graphics and a wide range of industrial applications. Although methods exist for capturing and representing the optical properties of materials and how they vary across surfaces (Haindl & Filip, 2013), the representations are typically very high-dimensional, and how these representations relate to subjective perceptual impressions of material appearance remains poorly understood. Here, we used a data-driven approach to characterizing the perceived appearance characteristics of 30 samples of wood veneer using a "visual fingerprint" that describes each sample as a multidimensional feature vector, with each dimension capturing a different aspect of the appearance. Fifty-six crowd-sourced participants viewed triplets of movies depicting different wood samples as the sample rotated. Their task was to report which of the two match samples was subjectively most similar to the test sample. In another online experiment, 45 participants rated 10 wood-related appearance characteristics for each of the samples. The results reveal a consistent embedding of the samples across both experiments and a set of nine perceptual dimensions capturing aspects including the roughness, directionality, and spatial scale of the surface patterns. We also showed that a weighted linear combination of 11 image statistics, inspired by the rating characteristics, predicts perceptual dimensions well.

The aggregation structure and rheological properties of catanionic surfactant mixtures and potential applications in fracturing fluids

Clean fracturing fluids are widely used in reservoir stimulation and increasing production due to their characteristics of simple preparation, no residue, easy flowback, and low damage. At present, clean fracturing fluids are mainly prepared by cationic surfactants as main agent and inorganic or organic salts as additives, which can lead to unavoidable losses of cationic surfactants due to their adsorption in the formation. Anionic-cationic surfactants composite system can not only compensate for the shortcomings of a single surfactant system, but also improve the reservoir adaptability of the surfactant system. In this paper, a clean fracturing fluid was prepared with long-chain anionic surfactant, Sodium erucate (NaOEr), as main agent and a series of cationic surfactants with different as additive. Then, the aggregation behavior of mixed system was determined by visual appearance, rheology experiments, differential scanning calorimetry and cryogenic transmission electron microscopy. The phase transition mechanism induced by temperature was proposed, and the performance of the mixed system as a fracturing fluid was evaluated. The results showed the mixed systems could self-assemble into wormlike micelles when the length of hydrophobic carbon chains of cationic surfactant was 6 and 8. Increasing the length of the hydrophobic carbon chain could enhance the electrostatic effect, leading to precipitation in the mixed system. When the ratio of cationic surfactant was between 0.5 and 0.6 and the concentration was between 68 and 175 mmol∙L-1, the mixed systems tended to form three-dimensional structures by entangling and stacking wormlike micelles, showing high viscoelasticity and viscosity. The aggregation structure of the mixed system transformed from vesicles to wormlike micelles at 46.8 °C, which is attributed to the transition of carbon chains of NaOEr from non-flexible to flexible. Finally, the mixed system as a fracturing fluid has good shear resistance and temperature resistance. The viscosity of NaOEr/HTAB can reach above 50 mPa⋅s after sheared for 60 min at the conditions of 170 s−1 and 80 °C. This study provides an anionic clean fracturing fluid and broaden the application of viscoelastic surfactants in oilfield development.

Improving Understanding of Visual Snow by Quantifying its Appearance and Effect on Vision.

Visual snow is the hallmark of the neurological condition visual snow syndrome (VSS) but the characteristics of the visual snow percept remain poorly defined. This study aimed to quantify its appearance, interobserver variability, and effect on measured visual performance and self-reported visual quality. Twenty-three participants with VSS estimated their visual snow dot size, separation, luminance, and flicker rate by matching to a simulation. To assess whether visual snow masks vision, we compared pattern discrimination thresholds for textures that were similar in spatial scale to visual snow as well as more coarse than visual snow, in participants with VSS, and with and without external noise simulating visual snow in 23 controls. Mean and 95% confidence intervals for visual snow appearance were: size (6.0, 5.8-6.3 arcseconds), separation (2.0, 1.7-2.3 arcmin), luminance (72.4, 58.1-86.8 cd/m2), and flicker rate (25.8, 18.9-32.8 frames per image at 120 hertz [Hz]). Participants with finer dot spacing estimates also reported greater visibility of their visual snow (τb = -0.41, 95% confidence interval [CI] = -0.62 to -0.13, P = 0.01). In controls, adding simulated fine-scale visual snow to textures increased thresholds for fine but not coarse textures (F(1, 22) = 4.98, P = 0.036, ηp2 = 0.19). In VSS, thresholds for fine and coarse textures were similar (t(22) = 0.54, P = 0.60), suggesting that inherent visual snow does not act like external noise in controls. Our quantitative estimates of visual snow constrain its likely neural origins, may aid differential diagnosis, and inform future investigations of how it affects vision. Methods to quantify visual snow are needed for evaluation of potential treatments.

The Contribution of Fillers Used in the Correction of Malar Depression to Visual Quality and Quality of Life.

Objectives: This study aims to investigate the contributions of the filler procedure performed in the malar region to the patient's appearance as visual quality and quality of life. Methods: A total of 72 patients who underwent a malar filler procedure between March 2022 and March 2023 were included in the study. Each patient received a 2 cc injection of hyaluronic acid filler, with 1 cc administered on the right and 1 cc on the left. Photos before the malar filler procedure and photos taken in the first month after the procedure for individuals included in the study were independently evaluated by 2 physicians. Change criteria were rated on a scale of 1 to 5 as follows: (1) no change, (2) slight change, (3) moderate change, (4) significant change, and (5) very significant change. The satisfaction of the patients related to the malar filler procedure was evaluated by a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) scale of 1 to 10 (0 showing no satisfaction, 10 showing maximum satisfaction). Results: Physicians evaluated the visual appearance of the patients as a "very significant change" in all patients (100%). Of the 72 patients, 66 (91.6%) expressed satisfaction with the procedure, while 6 (8.4%) found the treatment insufficient and requested further interventions. Conclusion: Hyaluronic acid fillers applied to the malar region caused patient satisfaction in 91.6%. However, a few patients requested further interventions. Patients' requests for unnecessary operations should be noted and treated with caution since they may lead doctors in the wrong direction.

Recall of Odorous Objects in Virtual Reality

The aim was to investigate how the congruence of odors and visual objects in virtual reality (VR) affects later memory recall of the objects. Participants (N = 30) interacted with 12 objects in VR. The interaction was varied by odor congruency (i.e., the odor matched the object’s visual appearance, the odor did not match the object’s visual appearance, or the object had no odor); odor quality (i.e., an authentic or a synthetic odor); and interaction type (i.e., participants could look and manipulate or could only look at objects). After interacting with the 12 objects, incidental memory performance was measured with a free recall task. In addition, the participants rated the pleasantness and arousal of the interaction with each object. The results showed that the participants remembered significantly more objects with congruent odors than objects with incongruent odors or odorless objects. Furthermore, interaction with congruent objects was rated significantly more pleasant and relaxed than interaction with incongruent objects. Odor quality and interaction type did not have significant effects on recall or emotional ratings. These results can be utilized in the development of multisensory VR applications.

Effect of bacterial cellulose on the foaming properties of egg white and soy proteins

Food foams are highly industrially relevant systems, responsible for the visual appearance and organoleptic properties of many processed foods. Foam characteristics can be further improved by food-grade additives. This study investigates the influence of bacterial cellulose (BC) on the foaming capacity (FC) and foam stability (FS) of egg white protein (EWP) and soy protein isolate (SPI), important food foaming agents. The effects of pH, BC concentration and particle size on the FS and FC were analyzed. Compared to SPI, EWP demonstrated higher FC, an effect that is tentatively assigned to its lower molecular weight, hence faster diffusion to the interface. Adding 0.1 % BC to EWP (4 %, at pH 7.0) and to SPI (4 %, at pH 3.0) increased the FC by 1.6 and 1.5 times, respectively. The addition of BC also reduced the foam's liquid drainage, although not impacting the FS. Surprisingly, large flakes of BC (Dv(50) of 1104 µm) yielded higher FC values than smaller ones. We hypothesize that larger BC flakes may act as anchoring sites, stabilizing the air bubbles during whipping. BC flakes were observed in the plateau borders and nodes of EWP foams, clogging the water channels and preventing drainage. This work demonstrates the potential of BC as a food-grade foam enhancer, providing a new tool for the food engineer´s arsenal.

Efficacy of Green Silver Nanoparticles (GAbNPs) against Multidrug Resistance in Staphylococcus aureus from Mastitis-infected Cows

Background: Antimicrobial resistance being the major emerging problem for management of mastitis in cow hence, the research work was undertaken in a geographical area around Shirwal town in Satara district of Western Maharashtra, India to investigate the occurrence of multidrug resistance in Staphylococcus aureus (MDRSA) isolated from mastitic cow milk samples. Further assessment was carried out for antimicrobial efficacy of formulation of Green Silver Nanoparticles (GAgNPs) synthesized from Azadirechta indica against MDRSA of mastitis origin. Methods: A total of 250 milk samples from cows suspected of mastitis were screened by the California Mastitis Test (CMT). The CMT-positive samples were subjected to bacteriological investigation for the presence of S. aureus as an etiological agent. The isolates identified as S. aureus were further authenticated by the molecular method targeting 16s-rRNA and nuc gene. All isolates of S. aureus were subjected to an antimicrobial susceptibility test. The randomly selected MDRSA isolates were subjected to antimicrobial susceptibility testing with GAgNPs formulation were prepared from silver nitrate by reducing with Azadirachta indica leaf extract. Result: Out of 250 cow milk samples suspected for having mastitis were screened with CMT, 170 tested positive. From these milk samples 145 isolates of S. aureus were isolated and bacteriologically identified. When processed for antibiotic sensitivity 60 were detected having multidrug resistance. Maximum resistance was shown against beta-lactam antibiotics. GAgNP synthesized and characterized with visual appearance, spectroscopy and TEM (Transmission electron microscopy) and tested for in vitro antimicrobial efficacy against MDRSA showed significant antimicrobial property.

Enhancing Brain Segmentation in MRI through Integration of Hidden Markov Random Field Model and Whale Optimization Algorithm

The automatic delineation and segmentation of the brain tissues from Magnetic Resonance Images (MRIs) is a great challenge in the medical context. The difficulty of this task arises out of the similar visual appearance of neighboring brain structures in MR images. In this study, we present an automatic approach for robust and accurate brain tissue boundary outlining in MR images. This algorithm is proposed for the tissue classification of MR brain images into White Matter (WM), Gray Matter (GM) and Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF). The proposed segmentation process combines two algorithms, the Hidden Markov Random Field (HMRF) model and the Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA), to enhance the treatment accuracy. In addition, we use the Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) to optimize the performance of the segmentation method. The experimental results from a dataset of brain MR images show the superiority of our proposed method, referred to HMRF-WOA, as compared to other reported approaches. The HMRF-WOA is evaluated on multiple MRI contrasts, including both simulated and real MR brain images. The well-known Dice coefficient (DC) and Jaccard coefficient (JC) were used as similarity metrics. The results show that, in many cases, our proposed method approaches the perfect segmentation with a Dice coefficient and Jaccard coefficient above 0.9.

Developmental changes of bodily self-consciousness in adolescent girls

The body and the self change markedly during adolescence, but how does bodily self-consciousness, the pre-reflexive experience of being a bodily subject, change? We addressed this issue by studying embodiment towards virtual avatars in 70 girls aged 10–17 years. We manipulated the synchrony between participants’ and avatars’ touch or movement, as well as the avatar visual shape or size relative to each participant’s body. A weaker avatar’s embodiment in case of mismatch between the body seen in virtual reality and the real body is indicative of a more robust bodily self-consciousness. In both the visuo-tactile and the visuo-motor experiments, asynchrony decreased ownership feeling to the same extent for all participants, while the effect of asynchrony on agency feeling increased with age. In the visuo-tactile experiment, incongruence in visual appearance did not affect agency feeling but impacted ownership, especially in older teenage girls. These findings highlight the higher malleability of bodily self-consciousness at the beginning of adolescence and suggest some independence between body ownership and agency.

Recoverable Privacy-Preserving Image Classification through Noise-like Adversarial Examples

With the increasing prevalence of cloud computing platforms, ensuring data privacy during the cloud-based image-related services such as classification has become crucial. In this study, we propose a novel privacy-preserving image classification scheme that enables the direct application of classifiers trained in the plaintext domain to classify encrypted images without the need of retraining a dedicated classifier. Moreover, encrypted images can be decrypted back into their original form with high fidelity (recoverable) using a secret key. Specifically, our proposed scheme involves utilizing a feature extractor and an encoder to mask the plaintext image through a newly designed Noise-like Adversarial Example (NAE). Such an NAE not only introduces a noise-like visual appearance to the encrypted image but also compels the target classifier to predict the ciphertext as the same label as the original plaintext image. At the decoding phase, we adopt a Symmetric Residual Learning (SRL) framework for restoring the plaintext image with minimal degradation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that (1) the classification accuracy of the classifier trained in the plaintext domain remains the same in both the ciphertext and plaintext domains; (2) the encrypted images can be recovered into their original form with an average PSNR of up to 51+ dB for the SVHN dataset and 48+ dB for the VGGFace2 dataset; (3) our system exhibits satisfactory generalization capability on the encryption, decryption, and classification tasks across datasets that are different from the training one; and (4) a high-level of security is achieved against three potential threat models. The code is available at https://github.com/csjunjun/RIC.git .

Spraying for the beauty: Pesticide use for visual appearance in apple production

AbstractPesticides are used to reduce yield losses and to enhance the visual quality of products. However, pesticide use raises concerns due to negative health and environmental effects, hence ambitious policy goals for their reduction have been established. Reducing pesticides which mainly focus on visual quality of products could be an efficient strategy to contribute to these goals, without reducing food production. However, the role of “cosmetic” pesticide use is so far not well documented and understood. Here, we quantify cosmetic pesticide use and the influence of supply chain characteristics on their use. We focus on table apple production, where the visual quality of products is a key aspect. Using a sample of 196 apple growers in Switzerland, we find that 23.5%–59.2% of growers use cosmetic pesticides for the apples’ visual appearance. Farms mainly marketing via intermediaries are 23.9‐29.6% more likely to spray cosmetic pesticides for visual purposes compared to farms mainly direct marketing. Our findings highlight the role of supply chains in farmer decision‐making, recommending a decrease in the focus on visual product quality, especially in retail environments, thus minimizing unnecessary and irreversible risks of pesticide exposure by farmers without compromising food security.

Besifloxacin HCl Ophthalmic In situ Gel: Design, Optimization, In vitro and Ex vivo Investigation

The present work aimed to formulate and evaluate Besifloxacin Hydrochloride (HCl) ophthalmic in situ gel for conjunctivitis, based on temperature triggered gelation system to increase ocular residence time, bioavailability and patient compliance. Different formulations were prepared by using Poloxamer 407 and Poloxamer 188 as temperature sensitive as well as mucoadhesive polymers. Design expert software version 11 was used to optimized the formula. Optimized batch having Poloxamer 407 (24.80% w/v) and Poloxamer 188 (14.53% w/v) was evaluated for visual appearance, clarity, gelation temperature, gelling capacity, rheological property, ex vivo, in vitro release and accelerated stability studies. Histopathological study was carried out using Goat cornea and revealed no change in histopathology of the tissues. Formulation was found to be effective against the Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. Cumulative % drug release of Besifloxacin HCl ophthalmic in situ gel after 8 hours was found to be 96.47 %.