INTERNET RESOURCES: FREELY AVAILABLE MEDICAL IMAGES
Finding medical images freely available online can be difficult. Often they are protected under copyright or are not very high quality. These sites contain a variety of images of medical and health subjects that can be used for educational purposes. The images are mostly available in the public domain or licensed under a Creative Commons license, but as with all multimedia, make sure to follow the usage and attribution rights for each.
American Society for Microbiology: MicrobeLibrary
A peer-reviewed digital media center for microbiology educators. Material is intended for an undergraduate audience, but the images may be applicable to wider audiences. The collection is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Public Health Image Library (PHIL)
PHIL contains photos and illustrations that can be used by educators, researchers, and health care providers to easily communicate public health messages. Most of the material is in the public domain.
Flickr: Specimens (Pathology)
Gross and microscopic images of pathology specimens taken by Ed Uthman, a practicing pathologist in Houston, TX. Contains over 930 images, all licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license.
National Cancer Institute: Visuals Online
Over 2,000 photos, diagrams, and drawings that can be used to help communicate meaning, describe concepts, and tell stories of biomedical, science, and patient-care topics. Most of the images are in the public domain.
National Library of Medicine: Images from the History of Medicine
From the National Library of Medicine’s History of Medicine Division, this collection contains over 70,000 pictorial items on the social and historical aspects of medicine ranging from the Middle Ages to the present. While many of the items are protected under copyright, there are a number available in the public domain.
Trauma.org: Trauma Image Database
A repository of trauma images, freely available for educational use, that are submitted by trauma care professionals from around the world. Content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.5) license.
University of Utah: Health Education Assets Library (HEAL)
HEAL, housed at the University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Digital Library, contains over 22,000 freely available digital materials for health sciences education. Specific collections in HEAL include neuroscience, hematology, histology, and dermatology, among other subjects.
Kepsel AC. MLA News | April 2015, Volume 55, Issue 4.