Fat, blood and liver: illustrating NAFLD

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease involves more than one organ. This figure for Medscape Education follows the route from adipose tissue, through the circulation, to the liver, so the systemic nature of the disease is visible rather than described.

Three locations, one image

Each location is given its own area of the figure and the three are tied together by the flow between them. The adipose tissue, the blood and the liver are drawn at scales that make sense next to each other, which meant simplifying some structures so none of them crowded the rest.

Restraint in colour

The palette is deliberately limited so the pathway reads first and the anatomical detail second. A figure like this is usually seen on a slide for a few seconds, and it has to land in that time.

The NAFLD figure is part of the clinical and editorial series.