Initially viewers might think they are looking at a piece of abstract art, but take a closer look, it's not an abstract painting at all. It is in fact a picture of the tissue structure of a woman's clitoris created by Dr Wichai Ekataksin, director of the liver research unit at Mahidol University's faculty of tropical medicine.

Dr Wichai has developed a technique that reproduces on a giant scale the microscopic structure of human tissue. He uses what he calls his "histology atlas" technique to turn matter that is normally only seen under a microscope into large-scale pictures, allowing the public a peek into the mystery behind their own bodies.

"So don't feel strange if we tell you that the thousands of lines in the picture you're looking at are the microscopic structure of a human clitoris," Dr Wichai said. His rendition of the clitoris, used to teach medical students, is Dr Wichai's largest masterpiece so far. In fact, he claims it's the world's largest histology atlas.

The large, sharp and clear picture shows students in minute detail the complex nervous system around the clitoris and how this fits in with its whole structure.

This, he said, is important for furthering students' study of histology.

It is hoped his development in this field will become a key resource for medical study, allowing doctors and medical students to understand more about cells and tissues at a microscopic level.

Making the atlas was not easy.

"It's very difficult to make a huge image from a tiny specimen. We therefore developed a technique that recreates what we see under the microscope, printing it on a huge canvas. The image has to show all the details of the tissue structure sharply and clearly," he said.

To create his histology atlases, Dr Wichai uses a 12-million megapixel digital camera together with a digital microscope to capture the tissue's structure.

He then sharpens the picture by reducing the size of the picture before printing.

"We know that if we want to get sharper pictures we have to reduce the size of the picture, so for this project, it meant that we had to make a very large file of the small specimen before we downsized it and made it sharper."

Taking between 200 and 600 shots for one specimen he then connects each shot like a jigsaw to recreate the whole picture.

He said this requires a lot of planning to capture the images to make sure each shot joins smoothly.

Photoshop is important in the image-reconstruction process.

To reconstruct the image of one specimen in files between 15 gigabytes to 20 gigabytes takes between two to three days.

The file is then reduced to one tenth of its size before it is sent to be printed on a large format printer at a standard size of 1 to 1.5 metres.

So far Dr Wichai has produced around 50 histology specimen pictures, of which 30 per cent are specimens of the liver.

The remainder are pictures of tissue from the endocrine system, the respiratory system, the digestive system, the nervous system and the testicles and clitoris.

Dr Wichai plans to continue developing histology atlases until he has up to 200 pictures covering around 100 organs of the human body. He said all the pictures would be kept for use as a reference for medical students and researchers.

Pongpen Sutharoj

The Nation