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Biomedical Images: Finding Images for Lectures and Publications

This guide contains resources for finding biomedical images for reuse, and provides information on giving attribution to the creator or copyright holder.

Reusing Images

Whenever you reuse an image or multimedia it is necessary to give attribution to the creator or copyright holder. Some resources provide images that are freely available for noncommericial, education purposes such as a presentation, as long as you attribute the source. These are often under a open copyright Creative Commons license, or are freely available without restrictions in the Public Domain. While other resources require that you ask for permission from the copyright holder.  Always check the copyright statement.

How to Give Attribution

Attribution should be used for open-copyright work. Attribution details include:

T  - Title of the image

A  - Name of creator 

S  - Source or URL 

L  - License, type of Creative Commons license. Include a link to the license.

Attribution is giving credit to copyright holder or creator of materials such as images, videos, audio, and other creative works according to the terms of their copyright license.

Citation Format

Images used in a journal or publication, must follow the citation format listed in the publisher's style guide. 

When citing restricted work where the copyright holder does not share the rights with the public, check the image's copyright permissions for how the image may be used, and how to obtain permission. The copyright holder may require that certain information be included.

Fair Use & Public Domain

Fair Use permits the use copyrighted material without permission under certain circumstances such as nonprofit, education purposes. Four factors determine Fair Use:

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether use is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the work.

Reliable Images

It is important to use reliable sources for biomedical images. Images found in a Google Images search may not be from a reliable source. These images can be altered, improperly contextualized, inaccurately described, or misattributed, or unusable due to copyright restrictions. Keep in mind that Google Images is not the original source of the image.

Online Biomedical Image Resources

Most of the websites below offer freely available, open-copyright images in the Public Domain or under a Creative Commons license. Whenever you reuse an image you should give attribution to the source. Always check the copyright policy before reusing an image.

History of Medicine 

Licensed Databases with Biomedical Images

The resources below are licensed by the Levy Library for the Mount Sinai Community.  Use of images in these resources is limited to noncommercial, nonprofit, education purposes, such as a presentation. Permission must be obtained from the copyright holder for commercial, print or online use. It is the responsibility of the user to adhere to the copyright terms.

Mount Sinai Visualization Services

Mount Sinai Medical Illustrators create scientific and medical visualizations for faculty, staff and student researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine as well as for clinicians and researchers across the Mount Sinai Health System. Visualization subjects range from surgical procedures to sub-cellular processes. To learn more about working with them visit the Visualization Services page.

Mount Sinai, The Arthur H. Aufses, Jr. MD Archives

Mount Sinai does not own the copyright to every image in the archive. It is the responsibility of the researcher to adhere to Copyright law.  Please contact the Aufses Archives for the copyright status of an image.