Micro-Cinematography in Medical Research

Abstract

The motion picture is an extremely valuable tool for the demonstration of facts. An old proverb reads: "One picture is worth more than many thousand words." The usefulness of the motion picture is especially obvious in medical science. Many records are made of surgical operations, of presentations of cases, etc. Today all the institutions of learning know the importance of the motion picture as a means of demonstration. By its domination of time, the motion picture is also a great help to research workers, especially where the human eye has its limits. We are chiefly concerned with the motion picture, especially the microscopic motion picture, as a means for investigation.The use of motion pictures for the analysis of movements of various subjects, especially men and animals, is as old as cinematography itself. I might call your attention to the experiments of Muybridge in America, and of Marey in France, about the year 1890. As a matter of fact we can safely say that the motion picture originated in the biological laboratory. Muybridge used a whole battery of still cameras, to be released by strings, which were placed in a row. In this way he took consecutive pictures of walking men and animals in order to study the various phases of their movements. Marey used for his experiments only one camera of the ordinary type, but placed in front of the plate a revolving shutter with slots in it, and made a number of exposures of the moving subject on the same plate. He studied, for example, the movements of a rabbit or a cat which had been dropped from a certain height. He also extended his researches to the study of flying birds by using a kind of photographic gun, and obtained consecutive pictures representing the progressive movements.

Understanding cell fate control by continuous single-cell quantification

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Cells on film – the past and future of cinemicroscopy

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