Photography has come a long way in the two decades since digital cameras all but relegated picture taking on film to a chapter in the history book of technology. Image-processing tools like Photoshop and mobile apps like Instagram have turned anyone with aspirations into a postproduction touch-up artist. Revolutionary, yes. But it’s nothing compared to the evolutionary explosion in imaging techniques that the digital crossover has unleashed in laboratories.

“Every major advance in imaging technology precipitates a new round of breakthroughs in cell biology,” says structural biologist Grant Jensen, an HHMI investigator at the California Institute of Technology. Seeing is the quickest route to understanding, says Jensen, who has been using a technique similar to a computed tomography (CT) scan to render visible the molecular machinery inside cells in three-dimensional splendor.

Illustration by Mitch Blunt