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Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) has been widely researched for histopathological images. It is challenging to retrieve contently similar regions from histopathological whole slide images (WSIs) for regions of interest (ROIs) in different size. In this paper, we propose a novel CBIR framework for database that consists of WSIs and size-scalable query ROIs. Each WSI in the database is encoded into a matrix of binary codes. When retrieving, a group of region proposals that have similar size with the query ROI are firstly located in the database through an efficient table-lookup approach. Then, these regions are ranked by a designed multi-binary-code-based similarity measurement. Finally, the top relevant regions and their locations in the WSIs as well as the corresponding diagnostic information are returned to assist pathologists. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is evaluated on a fine-annotated WSI database of epithelial breast tumors. The experimental results have proved that the proposed framework is effective for retrieval from database that consists of WSIs. Specifically, for query ROIs of 4096 $\times$ 4096 pixels, the retrieval precision of the top 20 return has reached 96% and the retrieval time is less than 1.5 s.

Herein, a novel ultra-high salt hydrophobic associated polymer, UUCPAM, was prepared using acrylamide, acrylic acid, 2-acrylamide-2-methyl propane sulfonic acid and the hydrophobic monomer UUC. Polymerization exothermic test results indicated that the increase in the hydrophobic monomer content led to an increase in the exothermic time, which is considerably conducive to the formation of hydrophobic structures. The scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy studies showed that the polymer had complex network structures and that this phenomenon was considerably obvious in NaCl solution. The fluorescence probe experiment verified that the critical association concentration of this polymer decreased with an increase in the hydrophobic monomer. Rheology studies indicated that the polymer had good temperature and shear resistance in NaCl solution. Moreover, the apparent viscosity of the polymer remained above 80 mPa s when 0.3 wt% UUCPAM was added at 170 s−1 in 20 000 mg L−1 NaCl solution at 90 °C. The storage modulus that indicated strong elasticity increased with an increase in the polymer concentration. Meanwhile, the number of hydrophobic micro-zones increased, thus forming dense network structures. Therefore, the polymer was found to have excellent salt resistance and extensive application prospects.

Feature extraction is a crucial and challenging aspect in the computer-aided diagnosis of breast cancer with histopathological images. In recent years, many machine learning methods have been introduced to extract features from histopathological images. In this study, a novel nucleus-guided feature extraction framework based on convolutional neural network is proposed for histopathological images. The nuclei are first detected from images, and then used to train a designed convolutional neural network with three hierarchy structures. Through the trained network, image-level features including the pattern and spatial distribution of the nuclei are extracted. The proposed features are evaluated through the classification experiment on a histopathological image database of breast lesions. The experimental results show that the extracted features effectively represent histopathological images, and the proposed framework achieves a better classification performance for breast lesions than the compared state-of-the-art methods.

In the field of pathology, whole slide image (WSI) has become the major carrier of visual and diagnostic information. Content-based image retrieval among WSIs can aid the diagnosis of an unknown pathological image by finding its similar regions in WSIs with diagnostic information. However, the huge size and complex content of WSI pose several challenges for retrieval. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised, accurate, and fast retrieval method for a breast histopathological image. Specifically, the method presents a local statistical feature of nuclei for morphology and distribution of nuclei, and employs the Gabor feature to describe the texture information. The latent Dirichlet allocation model is utilized for high-level semantic mining. Locality-sensitive hashing is used to speed up the search. Experiments on a WSI database with more than 8000 images from 15 types of breast histopathology demonstrate that our method achieves about 0.9 retrieval precision as well as promising efficiency. Based on the proposed framework, we are developing a search engine for an online digital slide browsing and retrieval platform, which can be applied in computer-aided diagnosis, pathology education, and WSI archiving and management.

Histopathological image classification (HIC) and content-based histopathological image retrieval (CBHIR) are two promising applications for the histopathological whole slide image (WSI) analysis. HIC can efficiently predict the type of lesion involved in a histopathological image. In general, HIC can aid pathologists in locating high-risk cancer regions from a WSI by providing a cancerous probability map for the WSI. In contrast, CBHIR was developed to allow searches for regions with similar content for a region of interest (ROI) from a database consisting of historical cases. Sets of cases with similar content are accessible to pathologists, which can provide more valuable references for diagnosis. A drawback of the recent CBHIR framework is that a query ROI needs to be manually selected from a WSI. An automatic CBHIR approach for a WSI-wise analysis needs to be developed. In this paper, we propose a novel aided-diagnosis framework of breast cancer using whole slide images, which shares the advantages of both HIC and CBHIR. In our framework, CBHIR is automatically processed throughout the WSI, based on which a probability map regarding the malignancy of breast tumors is calculated. Through the probability map, the malignant regions in WSIs can be easily recognized. Furthermore, the retrieval results corresponding to each sub-region of the WSIs are recorded during the automatic analysis and are available to pathologists during their diagnosis. Our method was validated on fully annotated WSI data sets of breast tumors. The experimental results certify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Background and objective Content-based image retrieval is an effective method for histopathological image analysis. However, given a database of huge whole slide images (WSIs), acquiring appropriate region-of-interests (ROIs) for training is significant and difficult. Moreover, histopathological images can only be annotated by pathologists, resulting in the lack of labeling information. Therefore, it is an important and challenging task to generate ROIs from WSI and retrieve image with few labels. Methods This paper presents a novel unsupervised region proposing method for histopathological WSI based on Selective Search. Specifically, the WSI is over-segmented into regions which are hierarchically merged until the WSI becomes a single region. Nucleus-oriented similarity measures for region mergence and Nucleus–Cytoplasm color space for histopathological image are specially defined to generate accurate region proposals. Additionally, we propose a new semi-supervised hashing method for image retrieval. The semantic features of images are extracted with Latent Dirichlet Allocation and transformed into binary hashing codes with Supervised Hashing. Results The methods are tested on a large-scale multi-class database of breast histopathological WSIs. The results demonstrate that for one WSI, our region proposing method can generate 7.3 thousand contoured regions which fit well with 95.8% of the ROIs annotated by pathologists. The proposed hashing method can retrieve a query image among 136 thousand images in 0.29 s and reach precision of 91% with only 10% of images labeled. Conclusions The unsupervised region proposing method can generate regions as predictions of lesions in histopathological WSI. The region proposals can also serve as the training samples to train machine-learning models for image retrieval. The proposed hashing method can achieve fast and precise image retrieval with small amount of labels. Furthermore, the proposed methods can be potentially applied in online computer-aided-diagnosis systems.

In the field of pathological image analysis based on machine learning, the generation of appropriate training data set is significant but difficult. As a solution, this paper addresses a novel unsupervised region proposal method for histopathological whole slide image based on Selective Search. Specifically, the method utilizes multiple magnifications, modifies the similarity measure for grouping regions and proposes a new Nucleus-Cytoplasm color space to gain more region proposals. Additionally, a new retrieval acceleration method based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Supervised Hashing is raised. The experiments on a large-scale multi-class database of breast histopathological images demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our methods.

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) has been widely researched for medical images. In application of histo- pathological images, there are two issues that need to be carefully considered. The one is that the digital slide is stored in a spatially continuous image with a size of more than 10K x 10K pixels. The other is that the size of query image varies in a large range according to different diagnostic conditions. It is a challenging work to retrieve the eligible regions for the query image from the database that consists of whole slide images (WSIs). In this paper, we proposed a CBIR framework for the WSI database and size-scalable query images. Each WSI in the database is encoded and stored in a matrix of binary codes. When retrieving, the query image is first encoded into a set of binary codes and analyzed to pre-choose a set of regions from database using hashing method. Then a multi-binary-code-based similarity measurement based on hamming distance is designed to rank proposal regions. Finally, the top relevant regions and their locations in the WSIs along with the diagnostic information are returned to assist pathologists in diagnoses. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is evaluated in a fine-annotated WSIs database of epithelial breast tumors. The experimental results show that proposed framework is both effective and efficiency for content-based whole slide image retrieval.

A highly sensitive method for detection of DNA hybridization and phosphinothricin acetyltransferase (PAT) gene fragment, one of the screening detection genes of the transgenic plants, was developed based on the glassy carbon electrode (GCE) modified with polyaniline-(mesoporous nanozirconia)/poly-tyrosine film. The film exhibited excellent properties for immobilizing DNA probes (ss–DNA) and sensing DNA hybridization. The fabrication processes of the film, the DNA immobilization and hybridization on the film were studied by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and found that the electron transfer resistance (Ret) of the electrode surface increased with the concentration of the target DNA hybridized with the DNA probes, which could be applied for determination of the DNA hybridization and PAT gene. The dynamic detection range was from 1.0 × 10 −13 mol L −1 to 1.0 × 10 −6 mol L −1 , and the detection limit was 2.68 × 10 −14 mol L −1 . Compared with the other electrochemical DNA biosensors based on zirconia-based materials, the proposed biosensor showed its own performance of simplicity, good stability, fine selectivity and high sensitivity.

Surface modified Fe2O3 nanoparticles were successfully synthesized via different thermal treatment of the Fe(OH)3 precursor, which was obtained by the extraction-precipitation system. The Fe3+ ions were extracted into hexane by the extractant first, then the extracted solution containing Fe(III) complex was precipitated with NaOH solution. The obtained Fe(OH)3 precursor was given different thermal treatment, such as solvothermal reaction, an intense refluxing boiling tetralin and calcine at air, respectively. The obtained Fe2O3 nanoparticles were characterized by XRD, TEM, SEM, IR, UV-vis, and TG-DTG, respectively. The results showed that Fe2O3 products were well modified by extractant, which could be well dispersed into organic solvents to form the stable fluids.

A simple biomolecule-assisted hydrothermal approach was developed to synthesize ZnSe nanoparticles in this article. As-prepared zinc selenide was characterized by XRD, TEM, FTIR and UV-vis technologies. During the whole procedure, L-glutamic acid acted not only as complexing and capping agent, but a bridging agent between DNA molecule and zinc selenide nanospheres. The ZnSe nanoshperes could be used for the detection of the DNA hybridization. DNA specific-sequence related to PAT gene in the transgenic plants was determined with a detection range from 1.0 × 10−11 to 1.0 × 10−7 mol L−1 and a detection limit of 4.7 × 10−12 mol L−1 (3σ).

Well-dispersed MoS2 micro-spheres with the diameters of 0.5∼1.5 µm have been successfully synthesized via the extraction-solvothermal method. The ions were extracted into hexane by the extractant Cyanex 302 (di-(2,4,4-trimethylpentyl) monothiophosphinic acid) firstly, then the extracted solution was given solvothermal treatment to synthesize MoS2 at 150 °C for 24 hours. The obtained samples was characterized by XRD, EDS, SEM, TEM, and HRTEM technologies, respectively. Results indicated that Cyanex 302 acted as phase transferring agent, reductant, sulfur source and morphology-controlling agent in the whole procedure. Moreover, the tribological properties of liquid paraffin (LP) containing the as-prepared MoS2 micro-spheres were also evaluated on a four-ball machine and the chemical states of some typical elements on the worn surfaces were examined with XPS, showing that the MoS2 product was an excellent oil additive in LP with good anti-wear and friction-reducing properties.

CdS, CuS and MoS2 semiconductors were successfully synthesized at the aqueous-organic interfaces via the chemical synthesis method. The Cd2+, Cu2+, and ions were extracted into organic phase by the extractant di- (2,4,4-trimethylpentyl) monothiophosphinic acid firstly, then the obtained Cyanex 302-Cd2+ (Cu2+ or ) complexes in organic phase reacted with S2− in the aqueous phase at the aqueous-organic interfaces to synthesize sulfide nanomaterials, respectively. The obtained nanomaterials were characterized by x-ray powder diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and electron diffraction, respectively. It could be seen that the extractant played several functions in the whole procedure: the phase transferring agent, the morphology controlling agent and surface-modifying agent.

The friction and wear properties of MoS 2 micro-sized spheres (MS-MoS2) modified by Cyanex 302 (bis(2,4,4-trimethylpentyl) monothiophosphinic acid) as additive in liquid paraffin (LP) were studied and compared with those of commercial colloidal MoS 2 (CC-MoS 2 ) on a four-ball tester and an Optimol SRV oscillating friction and wear tester in a ball-on-disc contact configuration. The worn surfaces were examined with SEM and XPS, respectively. The results showed that the Cyanex 302-modified MS-MoS 2 was a better extreme-pressure and antiwear and friction-reducing additive in LP than CC-MoS 2 . The boundary lubrication mechanism could be deduced as the effective chemical adsorption film formed by the alkyl and active elements (S, O, and P) in Cyanex 302 and tribochemical reaction and deposition film containing MoS 2 , Fe 2 O 3 , and FePO 4 . Moreover, the coexistence of sliding and rolling frictions in the lubricant of MS-MoS 2 /LP also contributed to the enhanced tribological properties.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the tribological properties of MoS2 nano‐sized hollow spheres in liquid paraffin (LP) and the corresponding action mechanism. Morever, its feasibity of industrial application as an oil additive in the industrial lubrication field is also explored.Design/methodology/approachThe tribological properties of MoS2 nano‐sized hollow spheres (NH‐MoS2) modified by Cyanex 301(di‐(2,4,4‐trimethylpentyl) dithiophosphinic acid) with size of 200 ∼ 300 nm in LP are studied and compared with those of the commercial colloidal MoS2 (CC‐MoS2) on a four‐ball tester and an Optimol SRV Oscillating friction and wear tester in a ball‐on disk configuration. The worn surfaces of the lower flat disc are examined with a scanning electron microscopy and an X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy, respectively.FindingsResults show that NH‐MoS2 is a better extreme‐pressure additive and anti‐wear (AW) and friction‐reducing additive in LP than CC‐MoS2. Under the optimum concentration of 0.5 per cent for both NH‐MoS2 and CC‐MoS2 and the load of 400 N, the friction coefficient of NH‐MoS2 + LP and CC‐MoS2 + LP decreases about 43.8 and 6.3 per cent, and the wear volume loss decreases about 60.3 and 12.0 per cent compared with the pure LP. The boundary lubrication mechanism for NH‐MoS2 + LP can be deduced as the effective chemical adsorption protective film formed by the long chain alkyls R and active elements (S and P) in the modification layer and tribochemical reaction film containing the tribochemical products of the additive. Moreover, sliding and rolling frictions co‐exist in NH‐MoS2 + LP, doing contributions to the good tribological properties as well.Originality/valueIn this paper, the Cyanex 301‐modified MoS2 nano‐sized hollow spheres with diameter of 200 ∼ 300 nm are firstly added into LP to investigate its tribological properties. The excellent AW and friction‐reducing properties indicate that this MoS2 hollow spheres product is a good oil additive, and the fundamental data presented here will be useful for its further industrial application in the future.

This article presents a facile surfactant‐assisted route to the fabrication of ZnS hollow spheres with diameter of about 0.5∼1 µm in ethanol at room temperature. The surfactant quaternary ammonium salt of 2‐undecyl‐1‐dithioureido‐ethyl‐imidazoline (SUDEI) prepared in our lab acts as surface‐modifying agent, morphology‐controlling agent and stabilizing agent in the whole procedure. TEM, SEM, XRD, EDXA, UV‐vis, and FTIR were used to characterize the ZnS products. The influences of reaction conditions were discussed while a formation mechanism was proposed to explain this peculiar morphology. The ZnS hollow spheres product is of excellent dispersion capacity and stability in liquid paraffin (LP) and the tribological properties of LP containing ZnS hollow spheres were studied with an Optimol SRV (SRV is the abridged name for German Schwingung, Reibung, Verschleiss) oscillating friction and wear tester, showing excellent anti‐wear and friction‐reducing performances. The action mechanism of the ZnS hollow spher...

Tribological properties of MoS2 micrometer spheres modified by self-prepared surfactant as an additive in liquid paraffin (LP) are studied and compared with those of the commercial colloidal MoS2 on a four-ball tester and an Optimol SRV oscillating friction and wear tester. The worn surfaces are examined with SEM and XPS, respectively. Results show that MoS2 micrometer sphere is a much better extreme-pressure additive and anti-wear and friction-reducing additive in LP than the commercial colloidal MoS2. The boundary lubrication mechanism can be deduced as an effective chemical adsorption protective film formed by the long chain alkyl and active elements (S and N) in the prepared surfactant and tribochemical reaction film composed of the tribochemical reaction products of the additive. Moreover, sliding and rolling frictions exist simultaneously in the MoS2 micrometer spheres /LP lubricating system, which also do more contributions to the good tribological properties.

The tribological properties of MoS 2 microsized spheres (MS-MOS 2 ) with diameter of 0.5-3 μm modified by self-prepared surfactant quaternary ammonium salt of 2-undecyl-1-dithioureldo-ethyl-imidazoline (SUDEI) as an additive in base oil 500 SN were investigated and compared with those of commercial colloidal MOS 2 (CC-MOS 2 ) on a four-ball tester and an Optimol SRV oscillating friction and wear tester in a ball-on-disk contact configuration. The worn surfaces of the bottom flat disk were examined with scanning electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. It was found that the MoS 2 microsized spheres product was a much better extreme-pressure additive and antiwear and friction-reduction additive in 500 SN than commercial colloidal MOS 2 (CC-MoS 2 ). Under the appropriate concentration of 0.1% and 0.25% for MS-MOS 2 and CC-MoS 2 and the load of 400 N, the friction coefficient of MS-MOS 2 /oil and CC-MoS 2 /oil decreased about 25.0% and 12.5% and the wear volume loss decreased about 50.4% and 12.9% compared with the pure base stock. The boundary lubrication mechanism could be deduced as the effective chemical adsorption film formed by the long chain alkyl (C 11 H 23 ) and active elements (S and N) in the surfactant SUDEI and tribochemical reaction film composed of the tribochemical reaction products.

Mono-dispersed molybdenum disulfide solid spheres with the diameter of 0.5–2 μm have been successfully synthesized by a solvothermal method with a homemade quaternary ammonium salt of 2-undecyl-1-dithioureido-ethyl-imidazoline (SUDEI) as surfactant. The obtained solid spheres are characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), respectively. The influences of reaction conditions are discussed while a mechanism is proposed to explain the formation of the peculiar morphology.

Mono-dispersed molybdenum disulfide micro-spheres with the diameter of 1-3 {mu}m have been successfully synthesized via extraction-solvothermal method at 150 deg. C. The extractant Cyanex 301 (di-(2,4,4-trimethylpentyl) dithiophosphinic acid) acted as phase transferring agent, reductant, sulfur source and morphology-controlling agent in the whole procedure. The obtained MoS{sub 2} micro-spheres were characterized by XRD, EDS, SEM, TEM, HRTEM, IR, UV-Vis and TG, respectively. The influences of reaction conditions were discussed while a mechanism was proposed to explain the formation of the micro-spheres. Moreover, the tribological properties of liquid paraffin (LP) containing Cyanex 301-modified MoS{sub 2} micro-spheres were also evaluated on a four-ball machine, showing that the obtained MoS{sub 2} product was an excellent oil additive in LP and such lubricant had good anti-wear and friction-reducing properties. - Graphical abstract: Mono-dispersed MoS{sub 2} micro-spheres with the diameter of 1-3 {mu}m were synthesized in gasoline via extraction-solvothermal method at 150 deg. C. The MoS{sub 2} product could be well dispersed into organic solvents again and the tribological properties of liquid paraffin (LP) containing MoS{sub 2} micro-spheres were improved.

Hollow spherical molybdenum disulfide has been successfully synthesized via a solvothermal method using Cyanex 301 as sulfur source and modification agent. The hollow spheres are characterized by transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and Energy-Dispersive X-ray analysis. The influences of reaction conditions are also discussed while a mechanism is proposed to explain the formation of the peculiar morphology.

Stable organic fluids containing Ag2S nanoparticles modified by Cyanex301 (di-(2,4,4-trimethylpentyl) dithiophosphinic acid) have been prepared directly in alkane via a solvent extraction synthesis method. The organic fluids are so stable that the nanoparticles do not precipitate at room temperature even after more than one year even when the content of Ag2S nanoparticles is as high as 42 g L−1. The Ag2S nanoparticles are characterized by XRD, TEM, IR, UV-vis and TG-DSC, showing that the particles are well modified by the extractant Cyanex301. The obtained nanoparticles can be well dispersed again in organic solvents and the new fluids are also very stable. The loading concentration of Ag2S nanoparticles prepared through the extraction synthesis method is much higher than that prepared via a two-step (preparation and dispersion) synthesis method and found to decrease with an increase of the solvent polarity. The tribological properties of the Ag2S nanoparticles modified by Cyanex301 in liquid paraffin (LP) for a steel–steel friction pair are evaluated on a four-ball machine, showing that such a fluid, LP+Ag2S, has a low friction coefficient.

Stable organic fluid containing silver nanoparticles modified by extractant Cyanex 301 (di‐(2, 4, 4‐trimethylpentyl) dithiophosphinic acid) has been prepared directly in alkane by the solvent extraction‐reduction method. Ag+ is extracted into alkane by Cyanex 301, then the obtained Ag+‐Cyanex 301 complex is reduced with solid sodium borohydride to obtain the organic fluids containing Ag nanoparticles. The organic fluids are so stable that the nanoparticles do not precipitate at room temperature for more than two months when the concentration of Ag nanoparticles is about 0.10 mol L−1. The nanoparticles are characterized by XRD, TEM, IR, UV‐Vis, and TG‐DTG, showing that Ag nanoparticles are well modified by the extractant. The obtained Ag nanoparticles can be dispersed well in organic solvent again, and the new fluids are very stable in air. The loading concentrations decrease with increase of solvent polarity.

CdS nanowires with typical length more than 8 μm and width of 30 nm on average have been successfully synthesized through Cd(NO3)2 reacting with CS2 and ethylenediamine in microemulsion system of sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate (SBDS). The microstructures of the as-synthesized CdS nanowires were characterized using XRD, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and HRTEM. The possible formation mechanism was discussed. The morphologies of CdS sample strongly depend on the concentration of surfactant in solutions.

Flake-like MoSe2 nanomaterials were successfully synthesized via a chemical reaction in the mixed medium of ethanol and water (Vethanol:Vwater = 1:7) at 70 °C using di-(2, 4, 4-trimethylpentyl) dithiophosphinic acid extractant as surface-modifying agent, home-made NaHSe as Se source, Na2MoO4·2H2O as Mo source and NH2OH·HCl as reducing agent. The MoSe2 samples were characterized with XRD, TEM and EDXS, respectively. The results indicated that the morphologies of MoSe2 could be controlled by the concentration of extractant in the system, and flake-like MoSe2 with a diameter of about 70 nm was obtained when the addition amount of extractant was 0.75 g·L− 1.

Background Telepathology is a particularly useful pathological tool suitable for developing countries such as China, which generates a large number of pathology specimens each year due to the size of its population but has a shortage of well trained and experienced pathologists in primary cares hospitals and hospitals within under-developed regions. Pathologists in these hospitals often have difficulty diagnosing challenging pathology cases. Telepathology, especially second opinion or teleconsultation is one of the solutions to this problem [1-3]. We reported an internet based open telepathology consultation platform using whole slide images (WSI) in China. The results from the telepathology consultation service since inception have been analyzed and summarized for this publication. We believe that our experiences will help to promote telepathology in China and in other developing countries.

Monodispersed silver selenide (Ag2Se) nanoparticles have been prepared successfully by a hydrothermal reaction of AgNO3 with Na2SeSO3 in the presence of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) and KI at 180 °C for 20 h. TEM revealed that the nanoparticles are much like husked rice with lengths of about 60–80 nm and widths of about 30–40 nm. KI was dispersed in a PVP solution first, then an appropriate amount of AgNO3 solution was slowly added until the molar ratio of Ag+ to I− reached 1 : 1. The formed complex ions of [AgmIn](n−m)− and AgI in the procedure are more stable owing to the protection effect of PVP, or these could be considered as complexes of PVP–[AgmIn](n−m)− and PVP–AgI. These complexes functioned as the precursors; the formation rate of Ag2Se crystal cores in the hydrothermal reaction could be well controlled. The final shape and size of the product were affected by the amount of PVP and the molar ratio of I− to Ag+, and higher PVP content was beneficial to the formation of the husked rice-like shape. The Ag2Se nanoparticles can be used for the detection of DNA hybridization. A specific DNA sequence related to the PEP promoter gene in transgenic plants was determined with a detection range from 1.0 × 10−12 to 1.0 × 10−8 mol L−1 and a detection limit of 2.3 × 10−13 mol L−1 (3σ). The method had good selectivity and was successfully used to distinguish between a three-base mismatched ssDNA sequence, a non-complementary sequence and a complementary sequence.