Wiring the human brain Credit:Alfred Anwander, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences A map of pathways inside a person’s brain. Different parts of the brain talk to each other using different pathways and these have been coloured in here. This is a view from behind. It shows the links between the left and right sides of brain in red, the links between front and back in green, and the links between the brain and the rest of the body in blue. This brain is about 16.5 cm wide.
Human STEM Cell Credit: A Ferreira, Cristina Lopo and Eileen Gentleman, King’s College London. A stem cell, which can make some of the other types of cells found in the body. This one was taken from inside a person’s hip bone and was put in a mixture of chemicals made to be like where the cell lives inside the body. The cell is about 15 micrometres (0.015 mm) across.
Bacteria on Graphene Oxide Credit: Izzat Suffian, Kuo-Ching Mei, Houmam Kafa and Khuloud T Al-Jamal, King’s College London. Two bacteria sitting on an extremely thin sheet of carbon. This material is one of the thinnest, strongest materials so far discovered. Researchers are trying to stick different medicines to it so they can be carried to the right place in the body when needed. The bacteria are about 2 micrometres (0.002 mm) long.
Engineering Human Liver Tissue Credit :Chelsea Fortin, Kelly Stevens and Sangeeta Bhatia, Koch Institute, © MIT. This small piece of human liver has been put into a mouse with a damaged liver. The human liver has started to grow using blood from the mouse to help. Researchers hope that one day this could be used to help people with damaged livers. This picture is 1.1 mm wide. This image appeared as a result of the partnership between Wellcome Images and the Koch Institute at MIT.
Black Henna Allergy Credit: Nicola Kelley, Cardiff and Vale University Hospital NHS Trust. A black henna tattoo on the arm of a young girl. Henna is a dye that people use to draw on their skin, but it disappears over time. This girl has blisters on her arm because she is allergic to the dye. The blisters will heal but they may leave marks on her skin.
Clathrin Cage Credit: Maria Voigt, RCSB Protein Data Bank. These tiny cages are like baskets that carry things around inside a cell from one place to another. Cells can have lots of these cages inside them. When the cage is not being used it breaks up into smaller pieces, which get recycled. The cage can be put back together again when it’s next needed. This cage is about 50 nanometres (0.00005 mm) across.

Wellcome Image Awards - open for entries

Aug 15 2016

The call for contributions for the Wellcome Image Awards 2017 is now open. The awards celebrate the aesthetic beauty of scientific images, the research behind them and the incredible techniques used to create them.

First held in 1997, winners receive prizes up to £5,000 and the winning images are displayed in galleries and science centres across the UK and around the world. All images accepted into Wellcome Images’ collections will be considered and are judged on their:

quality
technique
visual impact
ability to communicate and engage.

The deadline for the 2017 Wellcome Image Awards is 11 September 2016. The winners will be announced in March 2017.

The 2016 Awards saw the launch of the Julie Dorrington Award for photography in a clinical environment. The award honours Julie’s contribution to Wellcome, the clinical photography profession and the service clinical photography provides to medicine and medical education.

Wellcome Images is always on the lookout for high-quality imagery that covers biomedical science and contemporary healthcare. Its collections cover all artistic media and imaging techniques, from hand-drawn illustrations to super-resolution microscopy and functional MRI scans.

For more information about how to submit images to the collection, visit www.welcomeimageawards.org