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Imaging intact human organs from the organ level to the cell

03 December 2021

Zoom and Enhance

From a satellite view of the Earth you can zoom into your town, street, and individual house. Can you keep zooming, to see yourself, then your organs, and then each individual cell that makes up your body? That’s what a new technique, using the world’s brightest X-rays from a particle accelerator, offers. The ability to see detail like this, in its three-dimensional context, could help answer important clinical questions and better understand how disease affects the body. By revealing the key structures at each level – organ, tissue, and cell, each shown in the video of a sample human lung – in exquisite detail the researchers are developing an atlas of human organs for other scientists and clinicians to study. A deceased COVID-19 patient’s lung was visualised, showing for the first time key structural impacts the disease has, and showcasing the technique’s potential for revealing hidden details of the human body.

Written by Anthony Lewis

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BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences until Jul 2023, it is now run independently by a dedicated team of scientists and writers. The website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biology, and its influence on medicine. The ever-growing archive of more than 4000 research images documents over a decade of progress. Explore the collection and see what you discover. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.

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