# Microscopic Histology Tissue Sections!



## cbarnard7 (Aug 30, 2013)

Hi All,

I work as a histologist (a person who cuts and stains tissues [like biopsies] for a pathological diagnosis) at a research lab and whenever I see some really cool sections I've cut, I often use the (>$40k!) Nikon scope we have here to take some pics. Here are some I took yesterday: Not looking for C&C- it's just something interesting!

Kidney Section (stained with Hematoxylin & Eosin)





Liver Section (H&E)





Skin Section (H&E)





Skin stained with Trichrome stain (sections stained blue are collagen [in this case used to determine elasticity problems])



 

Enjoy!


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## The_Traveler (Aug 30, 2013)

Histology pix are innately beautiful. ( but I did poorly in histo because I have poor figure-ground discrimination.)

A histo tech in Denver and a Man U fan - an offbeat combination.


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## sm4him (Aug 30, 2013)

Whoa, those are SO COOL! Thanks for sharing them.

Oh and Lew:  EVERYwhere is a good location to be a Man U fan.


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## cbarnard7 (Aug 30, 2013)

sm4him said:


> Whoa, those are SO COOL! Thanks for sharing them.
> 
> Oh and Lew: EVERYwhere is a good location to be a Man U fan.



Ya dang right!


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## Tiller (Aug 30, 2013)

These are awesome! So much detail in the human body, its incredible.

I wish I lived somewhere that soccer was enjoyed more. I enjoy watching the World Cup every 4 years, but that's about all I see unless I want to pay for special channels


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## Gavjenks (Aug 30, 2013)

For those interested, you don't need a $40,000 piece of equipment to take photos like this yourself.

If you buy a generic highschool bio lab-type microscope that has a T-mount option, then you can attach pretty much any DSLR or whatever with a boring old 50mm-100mm or so lens (or no lens, depending on how it is set up), and take photos of cells.  You only need about 100x-200x objectives to see average cells. Then you need some legally obtainable tissue (vegetable matter might be easier to go with than human liver cells, for example), and some way to slice it somewhat thinly. A scalpel is probably fine. Even if you can't get it as thin as in the OP, you can easily get it thin enough for light to get through it easily, which is sufficient to make an image. It's just that you'll see a bunch of out of focus cells in the background instead of super crisp white.

It won't be as high of quality, but you can get into the niche for just a couple hundred bucks.


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## cbarnard7 (Aug 30, 2013)

Tiller said:


> These are awesome! So much detail in the human body, its incredible.
> 
> I wish I lived somewhere that soccer was enjoyed more. I enjoy watching the World Cup every 4 years, but that's about all I see unless I want to pay for special channels



Well, NBCSports now owns the rights to all the English Premier League games for the US. It used to be Fox Soccer Channel (which costs more a month) but now it's on regular cable!

Soccer | NBC Sports

You can even download the free app and watch from your phone!


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## badrano (Aug 30, 2013)

Neat pics!

I think I see a smiley face in the kidney pic :mrgreen:


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## The_Traveler (Aug 30, 2013)

badrano said:


> Neat pics!
> 
> I think I see a smiley face in the kidney pic :mrgreen:



that was exactly my problem.


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## cbarnard7 (Aug 30, 2013)

Gavjenks said:


> For those interested, you don't need a $40,000 piece of equipment to take photos like this yourself.
> 
> If you buy a generic highschool bio lab-type microscope that has a T-mount option, then you can attach pretty much any DSLR or whatever with a boring old 50mm-100mm or so lens (or no lens, depending on how it is set up), and take photos of cells. You only need about 100x-200x objectives to see average cells. Then you need some legally obtainable tissue (vegetable matter might be easier to go with than human liver cells, for example&#8230, and some way to slice it somewhat thinly. A scalpel is probably fine. Even if you can't get it as thin as in the OP, you can easily get it thin enough for light to get through it easily, which is sufficient to make an image. It's just that you'll see a bunch of out of focus cells in the background instead of super crisp white.
> 
> It won't be as high of quality, but you can get into the niche for just a couple hundred bucks.



You are somewhat correct- for the most part. (The camera part, especially. You don't need such a fancy setup)

However, there are many, _many_ more steps to ensure a tissue can be seen the way that it's prepared here (tissue fixation, processing, embedding, microtomy, staining...etc). It's not so easy as cut some stuff up thinly and put it on a slide under a scope (especially for animal tissue). My best advice for anyone that is interested is to go online and buy control (already mounted) tissue sections for cheap:

Human Pathology Slide Set

This way, let the hard work be done and you'll get a variety of things! Then, you can do as Gavjenks recommends and mount a camera on your scope. Depending on the scope you get, the ocular will either be normally 5 or 10x. Multiply that by the objective (a high school one will normally have 4x/10x/40x) and you'll get total magnification. For example, this was taken at 200x.

PS: I know most of you knew how to get total mag, but I thought I'd throw it out there.


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## Gavjenks (Aug 30, 2013)

right sorry to forget the staining and stuff.

Though also keep in mind that if your goal is a pretty picture, and not to correctly diagnose somebody, you could just add in false color in photoshop, and have no need to hold onto the tissues for long term storage, etc. Depending on your artistic aims, you could skip some of those steps.


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