The UK’s British Heart Foundation annually runs a competition to discover the most striking images produced by its researchers. 2013, as it turns out, was a great year for heart photography, because these cardio images are amazing.
What’s so incredible about these photos is not just their beauty, but rather the stories behind them. For instance, this photo, created by Dr. Gillian Gray, Megan Swim, and Harris Morrison from the University of Edinburgh, showcases a three-dimensional view of an adult mouse heart. The group used Optical Projection Tomography (essentially, a CT scan) to produce it. Gray, Swim, and Morrison created the image to gain more knowledge of the damage caused by heart attacks, and this particular image wound up winning this year’s competition.
(Gizmodo has the full story on several other awesome heart images from the competition.)