Color Integrity: Is What You See What You Saw?

Introduction To microscopists, the image is everything. Th e fundamental reason we establish Koehler illumination in light microscopy is to optimize resolution and contrast, setting a baseline so that our images are reliable, consistent, and comparable. However, the microscope is only the front end of an imaging system. Is there a better way to standardize the color we see in the digital image so that it more consistently and reliably matches what we see in the microscope, especially for bright-fi eld images from colored specimens? An answer to this question would not only reduce the potential for missing critical information in conventional color bright-fi eld images [ 1 ] but could be especially important when using metachromatic stains where biochemical properties such as a change in pH can dramatically aff ect the color.