The Pathology of Frostbite.
Date: December 20, 2021
Medium: Adobe photoshop and Illustrator
Audience: Educated lay audience
Purpose: To visualize the pathogenesis, gross tissue damage and microscopic cellular damage associated with frostbite.
DEVELOPMENT 1: PREP DRAWINGS
Before starting, I did a rough ‘tissue landscape’ study to get a feel for the tissue environment frostbite affects (the blood vessels of the exposed extremities). I created this drawing of skin tissue cubes with progressive changes to the skin cells corresponding to each stage of frostbite: frostnip (left) , superficial frostbite (middle) and deep frostbite (right).
DEVELOPMENT 2: ROUGH DRAFTS
DRAFT 1: A rough layout was created with the tissue damage on the left and cellular damage on the right. DRAFT 2: A more refined layout was made with more detail in the finger tissue damage illustration as well as the cellular damage illustration.
DEVELOPMENT 3: GROSS TISSUE DAMAGE
A saggital section of a finger depicting normal anatomy on the left and frostbite affected damage on the right. The major regions affected are the fat and vessels, bone, joint and the skin. The grayscale drawing on the left was colourized to reflect further distinction between normal anatomy and pathological anatomy. The deoxygenation of tissue due to vasoconstriction results in a mottled and deep red colour of bone marrow and a purple hue due to cyanosis.
DEVELOPMENT 4: TISSUE CUBES
Three tissue cubes representing the three stages of frostbite were rendered to show a gradual change in cellular and vascular shape, the deterioration of skin tissue, and the formation and destruction of certain structures like the cysts and hair follicles, respectively. The tissue cubes from the left were colourized in photoshop and colour was also used to show the gradual deterioration of the skin tissue cube components and eventual cell death. Purple and yellow hues played a big role because subcutaneous fat is yellow and the purple hue is due to frostbite cyanosis.
