Accuracy is important to medical illustrators’ work. But what if you cannot see the subject matter you are drawing? I love illustrating the world of the cell, so I am always on the look-out for new resources and references that can show me what cells and intercellular structures actually look like. I recently heard about a new microscope that can create 3D movies of live cells. Located at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, this microscope uses what is known as a Bessel beam, a band of light which scans rapidly through live cells, capturing images (200 per second) that can be stacked together to show the 3D structure. See the full article at http://www.hhmi.org/news/betzig20110304.html.
Because this technique does not require the cells to be fixed and stained, nor does it kill them by over-exposing them to too much light, their structure can be examined over time, showing their membranes and organelles moving.
For example, one such movie shows the chromosomes separating over the course of 18 minutes, in preparation for cell division (still image shown below).
Mitosis (screen shot from video at http://www.hhmi.org/news/popups/mitosis_mov_pop.html)
This research was carried out at HHMI’s Janelia Farm Research Campus, where one of their research focuses is the development of imaging technologies and computational methods for image analysis. Some rainy day, I’ll have to browse their archives and catch up on the latest developments in microscopy.
