ABSTRACT

The ‹rst microscope consisted of a fused glass sphere attached to a brass plate by a screw and was constructed by Anthonie van Leeuwenhoek in about 1670. Until the mid-19th century, all microscope image recording was by careful drawing of the image observed by eye. The invention of photography allowed more accurate image recording (photomicrography). In the 1980s, the development of computer vision devices such as frame grabbers, together with image sensors, such as charge-coupled devices (CCDs) have marked a shift from the use of visual inspection and photographs to the use of digital software to display, analyze and record images. At the same time, some of the software used for the 3-D reconstruction and rendering of medical images such as ultrasound, CT, and MRI has been adapted to microscopic images. A particularly useful software package, produced under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health in the USA, ImageJ, is in the public domain and can be downloaded, with full supporting documentation from https://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/.