University of California San Francisco
UCSF School of Medicine UCSF Medical Center

Image Resources

CaduceusHave you ever needed an image for a presentation but weren’t able to find the right one? Here you will find a list of resources you can use to locate and download images for your lectures and presentations. Resources that include a significant proportion of Creative Commons imagery are identified by (CC). Several sites may contain their own usage terms.

These images are organized into four categories: Medical & Science, UCSF Brand & Culture, Creative Commons/Public Domain, and Stock Imagery. For tips on using medical and science images effectively, visit TEE's Working with Images page.

Medical and Science Image Resources
UCSF Brand and Culture
Creative Commons & Public Domain Images

Exploring these sites will involve broadening your search beyond just health- and medical-related images.

  • Flickr - search by license, colors, pattern - searchable by reuse rights
  • Flickr Commons - a sub-site of Flickr focused on library image collections with many historical photos
  • The Noun Project - a large archive of icons and stock photos
  • Pixabay - royalty-free images and stock, see usage information, search by color
  • Wikimedia Commons - a wide variety of public domain images, possibly useful for finding general medical images
  • World Images - an image database from California State University, may be useful for finding images of people and art-related medical imagery, see usage information
  • Europeana - a database of imagery from collections in Europe, may be useful for finding historical medical imagery, searchable by reuse rights
  • Google Images Search - use Search tools to search by Usage rights
Stock Images

If you are looking for a very specific type of image, and have a budget to work with, these sites are where you should start. All of these leading stock image sites have a selection of medical and scientific imagery available for purchase, with a variety of pricing tiers based on the user’s intended usage, and the quality desired.