Modern perspective methods/systems/instruments allow us to move far beyond the limitations of natural vision. On all scales from the submicroscopic to the cosmic, they expand our vision, revealing vanishingly faint images, invisible radiation, events imperceptibly swift or slow, remote realms of space, and landscapes/oceans which we cannot capture unaided.
Imaging the Microscopic World
Bacterial flagella Motor
Bacterial flagella are complex nanoscopic organelles that provide swimming and swarming motility in certain bacteria by using an organic/natural electric motor. Using a recently installed high-powered electron microscope at Imperial, a team of researchers led by Dr Morgan Beeby has visualised these motors in unprecedented clarity revealing previously invisible structural details.
The team used electron cryo-tomography to rapidly freeze the bacteria to -180 °C. To image the motors, they needed to use perspective principles and theory, because firstly the motors are in all kinds different directions presenting different aspects to the camera (e.g. top, side, obtusely angled orientation), and secondly, at this tiny scale everything vibrates and so methods had to be found to account for this wobbling across many images to create average motor viewing aspects, removing the image blurriness caused by the wobbling.
From the resulting images of many motors, they (by eye) select similar-looking images and classify them into 2-D aspect boxes, such as top-view, side-view, etc. Next, they put the results into a 3-D modelling program, which creates an accurate geometrical model of the ‘average’ motor.
Augmented Reality
The AccuVein AV500 is a near-infrared vein visualisation imaging device that uses a low-power laser to display a real-time image of veins on the surface of human skin via a green image projection. It is the first vein visualisation device that allows clinicians to accurately view the vein’s centreline.
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