There are many freely available image databases online that have varied licenses. Be sure to always check the licenses. Some are free to use however you want, some require attribution, some are restricted to non-commercial, and there are other potential parameters.
Please contact us if you have any questions!
General Images
Medical Images
General Images
Creative Commons
https://creativecommons.org/
PixaBay
https://pixabay.com/
Shutterstock
https://www.shutterstock.com/
UnSplash
https://unsplash.com/
Dreamstime
https://www.dreamstime.com/
Pexels
https://www.pexels.com/royalty-free-images
AdobeStock
https://stock.adobe.com/
Medical Images
National Library of Medicine Image Resources
- Open-i
Open-i is an open access biomedical image search engine that searches images from PubMed Central articles as well as several special image collections. It allows for substantial search customization via filters (specialties, image type, license type, etc.)
- MedPix
MedPix is an open access online database of medical images, teaching cases, and clinical topics.
- The Visible Human Project
The Visible Human Project created publicly available three-dimensional representations of a male and a female human body. These images include cross-sectional cryosections, CT, and MRI images.
- National Eye Institute Media Library
The National Eye Institute Media Library provides images and other media from multiple categories: eye exams and medical care, infographics, anatomy, laboratory, eye disease simulations, etc.
- NLM Digital Collections
NLM’s Digital Collections allow searching and browsing numerous document collections: Images from the History of Medicine, World War 1, Medicine in the Americas 1610-1920, and many more. You can also search the collections for only images.
- National Cancer Institute Visuals Online
The National Cancer Institute offers a collection of featured medical images in several collections: science & technology, childhood cancer, Spanish-language images and diagrams, anatomy, historical images, and B-roll videos. The full collection is also searchable.
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences
This is a searchable collection of scientific photos, illustrations, and videos. The images and videos in this gallery are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 3.0. This license lets you remix, tweak, and build upon this work non-commercially, as long as you credit and license your new creations under identical terms.
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Centers for Disease Control: Public Health Image Library (PHIL)
The Public Health Image Library offers a number of topical image collections on topics like influenza, bioterrorism, lab science, and more. Also of interest are image subsets selected for their interest to particular audiences: health care providers, teachers & trainers, librarians & researchers, students, consumers, and more.
Other Collections
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Health Education Assets Library (HEAL) Collection:The Health Education Assets Library (HEAL) is a collection of over 22,000 freely available digital materials for health sciences education.
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Lane Medical Library’s Bio-Image Search (Stanford Medicine)Lane Medical Library’s Bio-Image Search:
– Enables discovery of biomedical images you can use i.e., images with Public Domain & Creative Commons licenses;
– Aggregates biomedical images from many image sources;
– Displays results in four groups, from broadest reuse rights to most limited reuse rights. -
The Cell: An Image LibraryImages of cells, cell function, cellular structure and abnormalities in a variety of organisms.
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U.S. Government Photos & GraphicsPhotos from multiple government agencies, including the National Cancer Institute, CDC, and National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
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United States Agency for International Development GalleryInternational health/public health images.
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Flickr: Specimens (Pathology)
Gross and microscopic images of pathology specimens taken by Ed Uthman, a practicing pathologist in Houston, TX. Contains over 1,000 images, all licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. - OPEN Pediatrics
A multimedia library collection of free, downloadable animations and illustrations that can be used for educational purposes, including presentations, posters, diagrams. All animations and illustrations are distributed under a Creative Commons license which allows you to use the images for your own work as long as you provide credit to the author, and do not alter the images or use them for a commercial purpose.