Application and prospect of scientific photography in study of Chinese materia medica / 中草药

ABSTRACT

Scientific photography has been practiced in many aspects of Chinese materia medica for different levels of purposes. The images obtained from scientific photography were objective, accurate and detailed that can scientifically display the micro-morphological characteristics of medicinal plants. So that it can be further used for accurate description of morphological features, species identification, and systematic study of medicinal plants. But, there are fewer reports about the systematic and extensive application of scientific photography. In this paper, the concept, characteristics, and classification of the scientific photography have been discussed in detail. In particular, we also introduced how to solve the problem of small depth in scientific photography through depth synthesis technology for the first time. Based on these, we further elaborated and demonstrated this new technology with the examples of photography of organs of medicinal plants, to broaden the application scope of scientific photography in the field of Chinese materia medica research.