These Are The World’s Deadliest Killers
HIV, cancer, malaria, and more, up close--plus some non-killers, to show what this new microscopy system can do.
At three Australian universities, a new tool is allowing researchers to see things that have never been seen before. GE’s superfancy new microscope, the DeltaVision OMX Blaze, is designed to see deep into cells to learn exactly how diseases work. Says GE:
The OMX, which GE launched in late 2011, uses a combination of optics and powerful computer algorithms to crash though the diffraction barrier, long thought as the limit for the resolution of optical microscopes. (The barrier stops microscopes from distinguishing between two objects separated by less than approximately half the wavelength of light used to image them.) The GE technique, called 3D structured illumination microscopy (SIM), more than doubles the resolution in all three dimensions. The result is that the OMX can see objects as small as 100 nanometers, ten times smaller than the typical germ.
They’ve been specifically looking at malignant items in the body: cancerous cells, viruses like HIV, and dangerous bacteria. Click through to our gallery to see these killers in more detail than you’ve ever seen before.
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Inside the Ear