A histological image is a microscope image of tissue that has been prepared, stained, and captured for examination. In digital pathology, these images are often scanned into whole-slide files, turning a glass slide into a large, analyzable data object.
They matter in cyber security because they are sensitive medical records and because AI tools may make clinical predictions from them. Attackers who steal, alter, or encrypt histological images can disrupt diagnosis, expose protected health information, or compromise downstream model results. Defenders focus on access control, encryption, audit logging, and image integrity checks so that a scan can be trusted as the same tissue sample seen at the microscope. In practice, histological images are used both for human review and for automated triage, so protecting their confidentiality and integrity is critical.