Every once in a while, all of the top science image types submit their finest snaps to Wellcome’s Image Awards. They’re always amazing. Wellcome Images is the world’s leading collection of medical imagery, covering medical and social history through to contemporary healthcare, biomedical science and clinical medicine. They’ve got more than 200,000 images ranging from ancient manuscripts, books you’ve never heard of and classic paintings to X-rays of weird bone diseases, photographs of weird diseases and scanning electron micrographs of things that cause weird diseases.
Here’s 14 of the best from this year’s Wellcome image competition.
1) Agricultural Sludge
The width of this image is just 155 micrometres and shows you that even sludge can be a thing of beauty (if you cover your nose and look really hard).
2) Bat
This is an X-ray projection of a brown long-eared bat hunted and killed by a domestic cat.
3) Breast Cancer Treatment
Scanning electron micrograph of a cluster of breast cancer cells (coloured blue). The cells have been treated with nanometre-sized particles (nanocarriers) carrying the anticancer drug doxorubicin. This is causing some of the cells to die (coloured purple) through a process known as programmed cell death.
4) Hardening Of Heart Tissue
This is a scanning electron micrograph of the surface of a human heart valve. Clumps of calcium salts are building up on the heart valve through a process called calcification. The orange bits are the denser sections. That almost put me off my kebab. But not quite.
5) Kidney Stone
Kidney stones form when salts, minerals and chemicals in the urine stick together. Apparently you don’t want to ever have to pee one of these things out your winky.
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