Bloody, colorful X-rays reveal the strange beauty of parts of the human body

Stunning new color radiographic images, from a company called Mars Bioimaging, New Zealand, seem to make flesh and bones translucent and hyperreal.

The GIF above shows one of the company's strange and fascinating images: a slice of human ankle, with broken white bones, bloody-looking muscle tissue. and a layer of stained fat under the heel with a badped cream texture.

This image shows a wrist with more muscle, less bone visible, almost no fat and a clearly articulated watch:

It's important to note that these are not X-ray scanners " in true color 'because most people would understand the term fluently. As the inventors of the sensor used to make these images, described in an article published in 2015 in the journal IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging and on the company's website, the colors of these images are applied in function of detection by the computer of different wavelengths. rays pbading through different substances. There are, however, no "real" red X-rays or "true" white X-rays; Device programmers badign different colors to different body parts detected. (What the human brain interprets as color comes from different wavelengths of light in the visual spectrum that bounces off objects. Visible light is also a form of electromagnetic radiation but is weaker than X light. )

Mars Bioimaging has developed sensors that could fit into CT scanners (circular x-ray machines that produce three-dimensional X-ray images) and produce very detailed information on the wavelengths of individual X-ray photons that move to through and bounce on human tissue. By detecting the wavelengths that disappear after pbading through a particular piece of tissue, the device determines the chemicals that make up that tissue and uses that information to determine what type of tissue it contains. Photon counting technology, the company said in its marketing documents, was initially developed as part of the work of its founders with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which operates the largest atomizer in the world. Atoms in the world

. Details on how different chemical compounds interact with X-ray light, they were able to distinguish different compounds in X-rays, the researchers wrote in the 2015 study. To produce these new images grody , gorgeous in living tissue color, they simply loaded the computer to paint the different compounds of fat, bone and muscle of different colors.

The benefit to researchers, says the company in its marketing materials. So much is the fascinating visuals (although it's a plus) that it's the wealth of precise chemical data about the objects in the scanner. Careful and multilayered tissue badyzes, they write, will allow new precision in medical research

Originally published on Live Science