The Picture of Health

Scanning hematoxylin and eosin stain of the small bowel.

Several laboratories in the Philippines are behind the latest advances in slide labeling. This micrograph features tissue stain caught up in the tangles of micropore tape fibers.

Credit: Othaniel Philip R. Balisan, The Philippine Heart Center, Manila, Philippines.

Striking slide scans captured on the MoticEasyScan One digital scanner with a 40X objective.

Credit: Casey Wahl, Motic Digital Pathology, San Francisco, USA.

It's easy to be impressed by hidden images in pathology, such as this heart hidden within a nucleus.

Credit: Lara Pijuan, Hospital del Mar, Barcelona.

Bright yellow flecks of hematoidin crystals are strewn across this colonic wall in a patient with aortoenteric fistula, redolent of the post-impressionist painter's most iconic work, "The Starry Night."

Credit: Randell Arias, Zamboanga City Medical Center, Philippines.

This picture depicts a fragment of bone tissue with tyrosine-like crystals that refract on a polarizing microscope using H&E stain. Colors were enhanced by filters.

This formation by Aspergillus species portrays the battle between angels and demons who are defeated and thrown down to Earth.

Credit: Franz Jobert L. Sebastian, The Philippine Heart Center, Manila, Philippines.

This negative image of a H&E section of the cerebellum reflects the balance between the arts and the sciences.

Credit: Michaela Nguyen (@Neuygn), Baptist Health South Florida Department of Pathology, USA.

Digital collages inspired by memories of the North Shore of O'ahu. Made with Adobe Photoshop.

Credit: Cooper Schwartz, Alpert Medical School at Brown University, Providence, USA.

A Pap-stained cytologic smear from a CT-scan guided fine needle aspiration biopsy of a right lower lobe lung mass, which turned out to be adenocarcinoma.

Credit: Felipe S. Templo, Jr., Philippine Heart Center, Quezon City, Philippines.

Credit: Sarah Kelting, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, USA.

Candida and cells.

Credit: Keenan Hogan, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, USA.

A SKY picture of mouse cancer models showing extensive chromosomal rearrangements.

Credit: Murty Vundavalli, Associate Professor, Institute for Cancer Genetics, Columbia University, New York, USA.

A pretty stain of the retina showing vessels.

Credit: Paula Keene Pierce, President, Excalibur Pathology, Inc., Norman, USA.

A sample from an acute lymphoblastic leukemia patient stained with Wright's stain, showing anisocytosis and macrocytosis.

Credit: Nina Simonini, Medical Laboratory Technician, AdventHealth Oncology and Hematology Lab, Orlando, USA.

This image was created from a Pap smear background containing spermatozoa.

Epidermis stained with Alcian blue.

Heart and lung dissection.

Credit: Luis Humberto Cruz Contreras, Hospital Materno Infantil, Irapuato, Mexico.

This microscopic image is a skin biopsy showing a tick bite, with the tick's mouth part attached to the skin in its entirety. You can even see the microanatomy of the insect.

Credit: Rola H. Ali, Associate Professor of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Kuwait University, and Pathologist, Cytogenetics/Molecular Lab, Kuwait Cancer Control Center, Kuwait City, Kuwait.

Adrenoreceptors in cultured heart cell.

Astrocyte connective tissue.

Cubist fat.

Normal skin follicle.

Credit: Brian J. Poindexter and Roger J. Bick, Multi-User Fluorescence Imaging and Microscopy Core Lab, UT McGovern Medical School, USA.

Arizona wine crystals photographed through a microscope.

Polarized phenylethylamine crystals photographed through a microscope.

Credit: Scott Taft, Tucson, USA.

The image on the left is from a fibroadenoma, H&E-stained, 100X magnification. The image on the right is from a cervicovaginal Pap smear and shows aggregates of parabasal cells.

Credit: Rico P. Lasaca, Our Lady of Porziuncola Hospital Inc., Calbayog City, Western Samar, Philippines.

This image is an IshiharaGram, an aesthetic concept series I created by merging the Gram stain and the Ishihara test, two different techniques in medicine that use color as a primary mechanism for determining clinical criteria. The pink five is composed of colored dots representing microscopic fields of GNRs or PMNs, whereas the surrounding purple dots represent microscopic fields of GPCs, GPRs, or yeast.

This animated image is a GIF that uses apparent motion to reveal various microorganisms observed in bronchoalveolar lavages and blood cultures.

The cells/organisms featured in this animated GIF are Candida albicans, PMNs with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Weissella confusa, Streptococcus parasanguinis, Micrococcus luteus, Geotrichum capitatum, Streptococcus gallolyticus, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella aerogenes, spermatozoa, Bacillus cereus, MSSA, VRE, Cutibacterium acnes, Bacillus licheniformis, Bacillus thuringiensis, Streptococcus sp., Eggerthella lenta, and squamous epithelial cells. Specimen sources featured include sputum, BAL, vaginal swab, blood culture, urine, tracheal aspirate, pelvic fluid, and biliary fluid. Slides and stains are ubiquitous in laboratory medicine, so much so that they can be easily overlooked. While they can be aesthetic, that quality is secondary to their utilitarian function. By disorienting the familiar microscopic image through an unfamiliar rollercoaster of kaleidoscopic blinks, rotations, and hops, their diagnostic power spins out of focus, and out of control of the viewer. There is not enough time to fixate on any particular image, which may be unusual for the seasoned laboratorian. The process of creating this GIF is equally paradoxical; to create seamless rapid successions, the construction and deliberation of each frame has to be painstakingly slow.

The cells/organisms featured in this animated GIF are Candida albicans, PMNs with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Weissella confusa, Streptococcus parasanguinis, Micrococcus luteus, Geotrichum capitatum, Streptococcus gallolyticus, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella aerogenes, spermatozoa, Bacillus cereus, MSSA, VRE, Cutibacterium acnes, Bacillus licheniformis, Bacillus thuringiensis, Streptococcus sp., Eggerthella lenta, and squamous epithelial cells. Specimen sources featured include sputum, BAL, vaginal swab, blood culture, urine, tracheal aspirate, pelvic fluid, and biliary fluid. Slides and stains are ubiquitous in laboratory medicine, so much so that they can be easily overlooked. While they can be aesthetic, that quality is secondary to their utilitarian function. By disorienting the familiar microscopic image through an unfamiliar rollercoaster of kaleidoscopic blinks, rotations, and hops, their diagnostic power spins out of focus, and out of control of the viewer. There is not enough time to fixate on any particular image, which may be unusual for the seasoned laboratorian. The process of creating this GIF is equally paradoxical; to create seamless rapid successions, the construction and deliberation of each frame has to be painstakingly slow.

Credit: Ansel Oommen, Clinical Laboratory Technologist, New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, and Research Assistant, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, USA.

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