Another case of villous adenoma of the transverse colon, this one more discrete and polyp-like than the case above. Although it had a semi-decent stalk, it was still far too large for safe removal by endoscopy, so the surgeon was called in to do a segmental resection of the colon. Prior to photographing, the specimen was pinned out in formalin and fixed overnight. The pink color in the center of the mass indicates that the formalin did not penetrate the whole lesion. Shame on me for being chintzy with the formalin!

Note how the surface texture of the villous adenoma differs markedly from that of the surrounding colonic mucosa.

The photo above was shot with a Nikon D100 digital SLR with Sigma 50mm f/2.8 macro lens. I stopped the diaphragm way down (about f/22) to bring as much of this very three-dimensional lesion as possible into focus. In Photoshop, I resized the image for Web display, sharpened the 'L' channel in Lab mode, and used the Levels command to brighten it a bit. Since many Web users now have flat-panel displays (not as bright as CRTs) and use their monitors in full room lighting, I like to brighten up pictures more than I would for an image that was meant for projection in a properly darkened lecture hall.