A sharper look at malaria

3D images of a human red blood cell (RBC) invaded by malaria-inducing parasite Plasmodium falciparum, at different stages of parasite development. The images are based on 3D maps of the refractive index in the cell, recorded by the non-invasive optical technique of Tomographic Phase Microscopy. Healthy RBC exhibits a characteristic biconcave shape (left). During the early stage of parasite maturation (center), the parasitophorus vacuole is shown as yellow region. In the late schizont stage, parasitized RBC is subjected to severe morphological changes (right). The blue regions inside the cell indicate parasite-produced hemozoin, a crystallized form of digested hemoglobin. Image courtesy / YongKeun Park, Michael Feld and Subra Suresh