Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

How much effort does it take for a visually impaired person to become a scientist?

As a visually impaired, just reading journal articles means overcoming a series of difficulties for chemist Matthew Guberman-Pfeffer:

First, he has to download PDF and convert it into text, and then use a reader to read the sentences in the text aloud. Readers sometimes do not understand scientific terms, sometimes read advertisements in the middle of a sentence, and sometimes read out each number, making the data confusing.

These are not a big problem, for the blind, the biggest obstacle is still the image.

There is no lack of scientific images in the paper, but the visually impaired people's usual ways of receiving data, such as Braille and voice transfer, are unable to process images, which greatly limits their possibility of learning science. It's time to make science more inclusive and accessible. The world needs a high-resolution data format that can be easily visualized by the visually impaired and ordinary people.

So four visually impaired scholars worked with a team of biochemists Bryan Shaw to develop a simple way to make the blind "read". The four authors, who were blind from birth or childhood, are one of the few people who have overcome visual impairment to become scientists, while Bryan Shaw led the study to help his son, who was born with a tumor in both eyes, to "see" science.

The visualization method proposed in this study is to print the image into a palpable image in 3D and use the lithphane effect to make the palpable image glow at video resolution. Gel electrophoresis, micrographs, electron and mass spectrometry, textbook illustrations and other images printed in this way can all be "seen" by touch and vision, with an accuracy of ≥ 79%.

Picking up the lithphane used in the study is nothing new. It is a traditional art method called "transparent relief". The researchers tried this method because lithphane could "see" with both touch and vision.

Lithphane is usually a thin, translucent relief made of thin porcelain or wax, usually less than 2 mm thick. Refer to the figure below, A _ light. But when light comes from behind (such as figures B and C below), Lithphane glows like a digital image.

The scattering of light through translucent materials makes thinner areas look brighter, while thicker areas look relatively dark, thus creating a visual effect.

In this way, a thin relief has the elements to become a common form of visual data: both for the visually impaired to touch and read, but also for ordinary people to see visually.

In fact, this kind of art already existed in Europe as early as the 17th century, and lithphane even appeared in China in the Tang Dynasty. Although lithphane has existed for a long time, it has never been regarded as a general form of visual data.

Bryan Shaw also found that lithphane's experience was interesting: he and a student were making 3D prints. "if we make these pictures thinner, we can print faster and use less resin," Bryan Shaw said. "

So the students made the picture as thin as potato chips. Bryan Shaw took a picture and held it under the light. He found that the picture not only had a 3D bump effect, but also looked like a picture when it was transparent.

A week after that, Bryan Shaw thought he and his students had invented a new technology, and then slowly discovered that lithphane had been invented more than 1000 years ago. At present, a lot of science is using old technologies in new ways, and Bryan Shaw's team is happy to be able to achieve this.

In the comparative experiment, scholars used small commercial 3D printers to make Lithophane at a cost of less than $5000 (about 34200 yuan). The team conducted a comparative experiment to compare the effects of visually impaired, blindfolded and normal vision subjects on "reading" Lithphane through touch and vision, respectively.

At first the team used the most common image in biochemistry: SDS- polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. If the visually impaired can "see" the electrophoretic map, their chances of learning life sciences will be greatly improved.

▲ SDS- Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis-Comparative experiment

The subjects were divided into three groups: 106blindfolded subjects and 5 blind subjects who were asked to interpret the Lithphane data with tactile perception.

Another group of subjects with normal vision (n = 106) who were not blindfolded were asked to explain Lithphane in terms of vision.

In order to compare the sharpness of the Lithphane with the original image, a third group of subjects with normal vision were asked to use vision to interpret the original digital image on the computer screen.

As can be seen from the above picture, when reading the Lithphane form of electrophoresis, the average interpretation accuracy of blind objects is 93.3%, that of subjects with normal vision is 91.4%, and that of blindfolded objects is 59.1%. The accuracy of interpreting digital images on the computer screen through vision is 79.6%.

The team added the Lithphane form of other four images (butterfly scale scanning electron microscope, protein mass spectrum, ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) spectrum of iron porphyrin protein, secondary structure map of seven-chain β-sheet protein) and organized comparative experiments.

The team finally found that the average Lithphane interpretation accuracy of the five images was 96.7% for blind objects, 92.2% for subjects with normal vision, and 79.8% for blindfolded tactile interpretation. The accuracy of interpreting digital images on the computer screen through vision is 88.4%.

For about 80% of the problems, the tactile accuracy of blind subjects is equal to or better than direct visual interpretation. This result shows that Lithphane can indeed be used as a universal, shared, barrier-free data format.

▲ Matthew Guberman-Pfeffer "read" lithphane with his fingers

After Data for All found Lithphane, a general visualization method, the team spread their ideas and looked for other ways to convert custom 2D images into tactile forms. They found another common method, the inflated form technology (swell form technology), also known as "instant picture" technology.

In this technology, special paper ("expansion paper") is used to make soft, foam-like touchable patterns. When heated, micron alcohol particles in the paper cause expansion in areas that have been printed with black ink or toner (color ink does not bulge).

▲ black ink partially raised palpable pattern

Compared with Lithphane method, the main advantage of inflated form technology is that it is faster than 3D printing, while the disadvantage is that it can not be compared with 3D printing in terms of accuracy, resolution and controllability.

At the same time, the team is also studying the visualization of color data. For example, the Lithphane of heat maps and 2D color images can be made by projecting monotone grayscale. In order to achieve quantitative data interpretation, digital images need to be converted into color space, such as "cubic helix (cubehelix)".

Cubehelix is a color disk generation algorithm. After the color table is converted to grayscale or replaced by tone, the change of its intensity will not be affected.

Co-author Mona Minkara, also a visually impaired scientist, excitedly said the study could revolutionize the way she communicates with students because visually impaired scholars can discuss the same information with healthy people at the same time. With the continuous enrichment of similar research, the universal accessibility of data will become the social foundation, this barrier-free state is the greatest significance of science.

In the school experience of these visually impaired scholars, they have encountered many obstacles and realized that the blind are not encouraged to study science and have been excluded from the laboratory. But in the face of science, this kind of aptitude is not necessary--

Atoms and molecules are less than 250 nm, which happens to be the diffraction limit of visible light. In the face of science on this scale, human vision is also of no use. Spectroscopy, microscopes, or crystals capable of diffracting X-rays (or neutrons or electrons) must be used for research. For the visually impaired, making artificial eyes for themselves in order to explore science is the equality that science brings.

Reference link:

Https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq2640

Https://www.science.org/content/article/how-3d-printing-could-help-blind-researchers-see-data

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