This CDC-developed technology describes an automated system for monitoring worker hazard exposures by recording data about where and when hazards occur in a workplace or other environment. This allows the hazards to be avoided and harmful exposures and risks reduced. This field-tested technology consists of an integrated, hand-held electronics instrument and software system that will precisely correlate multiple exposure levels with position coordinates of the user and features real-time data acquisition.

This CDC-developed technology is an aerosol preconcentration unit (APU) designed for use with spectroscopic detection techniques, including emission, Raman, or infrared spectroscopies. Most existing pulsed microplasma techniques, such as laser-induced breakdown, for aerosols rely mainly on filter-based collection and suffer from poor accuracy, precision, and detection limits and require long sample collection times.

CDC researchers have developed a novel acoustic whole body plethysmograph (AWBP) that allows measurement of tidal volume in lab animals, independent of gas compression in the lung. This system provides particular advantages over the traditional whole body plethysmograph (WBP) when measuring model animals with increased gas compression due to increased airway resistance or increased acceleration in the breathing pattern.

This CDC-developed technology entails a system for monitoring and assessing the risk of auditory damage from exposure to impulse noise, such as noise created by construction machinery and firearms. Noise dosimeters have been used extensively over the past two decades to document personal exposure to noise and assure workplaces comply with permissible noise exposure levels. However, due to older methods of calculating "noise dose," current noise dosimeters often inaccurately determine the risk of an impulse event.

CDC researchers have developed the Portable Exposure Assessment System (PEAS), a field-based, remotely deployed tool to monitor and provide early warning of working conditions that have a high likelihood of musculoskeletal injury. PEAS is a noninvasive, real-time, instrument-based system. Sensor technology simultaneously measures and collects data regarding the body loads and awkward postures imposed by package handling as well as driving-related, low-frequency vibrations.

This technology relates to the field of radioactive, isotopically-labeled calcofluor derivatives and uses of such compounds to detect a broad spectrum of filamentous fungi including pathogenic species such as Aspergillus and Mucorales, by diagnostic imaging methods such as positron emission tomography (PET) scanning.

The invention pertains to a technique for enhancing the resolution of images in light sheet microscopy by adding additional enhanced depth-of-focus optical arrangements and high numerical aperture objective lenses. The technique employs an arrangement of three objective lenses and a processor for combining captured images. The image composition utilizes the greater resolving power of the third high numerical aperture objective lens by imaging the light sheet and enhanced depth-of-focus arrangement resulting in improved overall resolution of the light sheet system.

The invention describes a method for improving the spatial resolution of optical microscopes that use line-scanning excitation, such as line-scanning confocal microscopes, line-scanning STED microscopes, or line-scanning light-sheet microscopes.

Available for licensing and commercial development as imaging agents for positron emission tomography of cancer are boramino acid compounds. The inventors showed that mimetics created by substituting the carboxylate group (-COO^-) of an amino acid with trifluoroborate (-BF_3^-) are metabolically stable and allow for the use of fluorene-18 (¹⁸F) as the radiolabel.

One of four deaths in the United States is due to cancer despite an emphasis on prevention, early detection, and treatment that has lowered cancer death rates by 20% in the past two decades. Further improvements in survival rates are likely to come from improving the limits of detection sensitivity at earlier stages of cancer. New approaches that rely heavily on genomic information, however, may change future testing strategies.