Inside Out

This is the type of thing I work on at my job. I try to make kidney tissue look pretty and have different colors light up different structures. Then I take pictures of it under the microscope and write programs to extract information about the pictures. Sometimes I want to quantify the amount of scar tissue present. Sometimes I'm looking to differentiate between different types of collagen in the tissue. Sometimes I'm interested in the integrity of cell membranes, or in the density of cells and nuclei present. Other times I'm looking for the presence of viruses and correlating that information with patient outcome. All the tissue I get is from kidneys either at, or at some time after a kidney transplant. In a strange way, I find the stained sections almost beautiful. It's amazing to see how we're built and what makes us work at a microscopic level.