infocus #62 June 2021 Medical Herbs

In this plant-themed feature, Winston Ingram takes a closer look at a range of medicinal herbs – some familiar, some less so, but all revealing a resplendent beauty under the lens.

DOI: 10.22443/rms.inf.1.206

I have taken a selection of herbs used in medicine, and, using various microscope techniques to show up their structure, colour and contrast, produced the results you see here.

I used a fluorescence technique to colour and emphasise the contrast in the subject, then used a thermal imaging camera to show up the heat signatures generated in the subject.

Other techniques include brightfield, darkfield, polarization and phase contrast. Some of the subjects were photographed in their original form, for others, I made 3-inch x 1-inch glass slides.

Slides were also used to make up the liquid samples of herbs supplied in that form. Editing was completed in Photoshop CS3.

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