Blood cells.

OK, so 4gb63photo got me thinking with his nursing shots... I wonder if I can get shots of blood smears at work? Guess what?!? I can!!! When we have a patient with an abnormal complete blood count (CBC), we smear the blood on a slide, stain it, and look at it under the microscope. Sometimes we just look at how the cells appear. Other times we actually count certain cells to see what kind of percentage are present. It can help diagnose diseases from leukemia to malaria to vitamin deficiencies. In any case, these shots are of different white cells through our microscope set at oil immersion 100X. I just hand held the 40D to the eyepiece and focused using LiveView. I still must say I LOVE this camera!!

Segmented neutrophils are white blood cells (WBC's) that are basically the vacuum cleaners of our body. They consume dying cells and bacteria. These cells are often found in pus.

Thanks for posting these Elizabeth! I work with horse/cat/dog/avian blood as part of my veterinary program. Besides avian which is vastly different (nucleated RBC!) there isn't much different between humans and the species I work with. Do you work with the marrow at all? Megakaryocytes rock Horse eosinophils are pretty unique too

That's awesome that you could focus on the image in the eyepiece. I'm going to have to try that! If you are interested in the differences between the humans and others, here is a link to my schools histology site.

Excellent micrographs !
Brian V.

Justin, as a former pre-vet student, and ultimately a bio major, I knew that birds had nucleated reds. I had just never seen them before, so that was a neat treat. The granules on the horse eos were just plain huge. Definitely could not deny what it was. You are right, though, for the most part, there are not a lot of differences. And no, I do not work with marrow, although our pathologist does. Thanks for your kind comments and I hope that you try it out, 'cause it was very easy!

Hope you enjoy vet school. I had the grades at the time, but I had too weak of a stomach and too soft of a heart, so I dropped my major my senior year. I could handle it now, but it's been over 8 years since I got my undergrad degree and therefore too long, PLUS I don't want to leave for 4 years to get the degree with a farm and small child. Besides, I'm happy putting up with humans!!


Brian, thanks a bunch. Must say this was fun on a slow afternoon. I'm planning on showing these to our lab manager and pathologist to see what they think. The pathology microscope has a camera attached to it that is capable of taking stills and movies. Be curious to see what he has to say about these.

Great captures. Have you ever seen cells with malaria in them?

so what do werewolves' blood cells look like?

This is great. I would like to know how you did this? what kind of lens. I have a hard enough time just looking through the scope much less a camara. Many years ago we had some mounts for scopes so that you could mount a camara. We still use the same scopes but do not know where the mounts are or if we did find them if they would work. I guess I could ask the pathologist what they use.

4g63photo wrote in post #6653567
Great captures. Have you ever seen cells with malaria in them?

We have some permanently fixed slides that you can see plasmodium, but I have never seen one in real life. I have seen patients that are septic with yeast, and it is weird to stain them and see hyphae. Needless to say, they don't make it the majority of the time....

Aucomo wrote in post #6654260
This is great. I would like to know how you did this? what kind of lens. I have a hard enough time just looking through the scope much less a camara. Many years ago we had some mounts for scopes so that you could mount a camara. We still use the same scopes but do not know where the mounts are or if we did find them if they would work. I guess I could ask the pathologist what they use.

LOL, it was actually very simple. I bumped up the source light to the slide and kind of made it too bright for MY taste. I think I used a f/5.6 with 1/50 s or 1/80 s on my kit lens set at around 55mm. WB was set for tungsten. Just held it up and pointed it through one of the eyepieces (it's a bino) and composed and focused using LiveView. Worked great. The first shot was taken using a WB of I think fluorescent, so I had to change it a little. The others look pretty much like what I see through the scope.

Wow. So when they are septic, there is yeast visible in the blood stain? Holy cow! Im looking this up!

nice pics! this brings back memories for me...i'm a Med Tech by degree. worked as a generalist, but did mostly hematology and blood banking...then switched into an unrelated field about three years out of school.

eos were always my favorite! lol

4g63photo wrote in post #6655727
Wow. So when they are septic, there is yeast visible in the blood stain? Holy cow! Im looking this up!

Most of the time septicemia is bacteria, but occasionally when the person has been given too many antibiotics, and has an entry point for yeast such as a foley (urinary catheter), vent (breathing tube), port or central line (line in chest where fluids are pushed into big vein), etc, it can happen. We have a blood culture bottle reader that tells us when "something" is growing in the blood after it has had a chance to incubate anywhere from 8 hours to five days. We then take the culture bottle, plate it, and also look at a gram stain. I'd say that 99.9% of the time it is gram positive cocci, gram negative rods, or gram positive rods, in that order. Every once in a while (I've seen it twice in four years) you'll see yeast. One of the people was so eaten up with yeast in her blood that you could see it in her peripheral blood smear without incubation to encourage growth. I was pretty freaked out. The cool part was that you could see the white cells where they had injested the yeast cells. Needless so say, she passed within just a few days.

Surely PUSS has two S's???

hehehe, great shots.
Cheers,
Mark.

Interresting shots for sure