Every year for nearly four decades, Nikon has received hundreds of entries in its Small World microscope photography contest. Every year, the images are more amazing, and this year's winners -- selected from nearly 2,000 submissions -- are undoubtedly the best yet. More Microscope Images: Creepy Close-Ups: Best Microscope Critter Photos Super Small: Top 20 Microscope Photos of 2011

Mini Motion: Award-Winning Microscope VideosSuper-close-ups of garlic, snail fossils, stinging nettle, bat embryos, bone cancer and a ladybug are among the top images this year. The first place winner (above) shows the blood-brain barrier in a living zebrafish embryo, which Nikon believes is the first image ever to show the formation of this barrier in a live animal. “We used fluorescent proteins to look at brain endothelial cells and watched the blood-brain barrier develop in real-time,” the winners, Jennifer Peters and Michael Taylor of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, in Memphis, said in a press release. “We took a 3-dimensional snapshot under a confocal microscope. Then, we stacked the images and compressed them into one – pseudo coloring them in rainbow to illustrate depth.” Here are the top 20 photomicrographs from the 38th Nikon Small World competition, selected for their originality, informational content, and visual impact by a panel of scientists, journalists and optical imaging experts. Above: 1st Place Jennifer Peters and Michael Taylor, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee Subject: The blood-brain barrier in a live zebrafish embryo

Technique: Confocal

Magnification: 20x

2nd Place Walter Piorkowski, South Beloit, Illinois Subject: Live newborn lynx spiderlings

Technique: Reflected Light/Fiber Optics/Image Stacking

Magnification: 6x

3rd Place Dylan Burnette, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland Subject: Human bone cancer (osteosarcoma) showing actin filaments (purple), mitochondria (yellow), and DNA (blue)

Technique: Structured Illumination Microscopy (SIM)

Magnification: 63x

4th Place W. Ryan Williamson, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, Virginia Subject: Drosophila melanogaster visual system halfway through pupal development, showing retina (gold), photoreceptor axons (blue), and brain (green)

Technique: Confocal

Magnification: 1,500x

5th Place Honorio Cócera, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain Subject: Cacoxenite (mineral) from La Paloma Mine, Spain

Technique: Transmitted Light

Magnification: 18x

6th Place Marek Mis, Marek Mis Photography, Suwalki, Poland Subject: Cosmarium sp. (desmid) near a Sphagnum sp. leaf

Technique: Polarized Light

Magnification: 100x

7th Place Michael Bridge, HSC Core Research Facilities -- Cell Imaging Lab, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah Subject: Eye organ of a Drosophila melanogaster (third-instar larvae)

Technique: Confocal

Magnification: 60x

8th Place Gerd A.Guenther, Düsseldorf, Germany Subject: Pleurobrachia sp. (sea gooseberry) larva

Technique: Differential Interference Contrast

Magnification: 500x

9th Place Geir Drange, Borgen, Norway Subject: Myrmica sp. (ant) carrying its larva

Technique: Reflected Light/Image Stacking

Magnification: 5x

10th Place Alvaro Migotto, University of São Paulo, Centro de Biologia Marinha, São Paulo Brazil Subject: Brittle star

Technique: Stereomicroscopy, Darkfield

Magnification: 8x

11th Place Jessica Von Stetina, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts Subject: Single optical section through the tip of the gut of a Drosophila melanogaster larva expressing a reporter for Notch signaling pathway activity (green), and stained with cytoskeletal (red) and nuclear (blue) markers

Technique: Confocal

Magnification: 25x

12th Place Esra Guc, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland Subject: 3D lymphangiogenesis assay. Cells sprout from dextran beads embedded in fibrin gel

Technique: Fluorescence and Confocal

Magnification: 200x

13th Place Diana Lipscomb, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Subject: Sonderia sp. (a ciliate that preys upon various algae, diatoms, and cyanobacteria)

Technique: Nomarski Interference Contrast

Magnification: 400x

14th Place José R. Almodovar Rivera, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico Subject: Pistil of the flower of Adenium obesum

Technique: Image Stacking

Magnification: 10x

15th Place Andrea Genre, Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Turin, Italy Subject: Section of a Coccinella (ladybug) leg

Technique: Confocal

Magnification: 10x

16th Place Douglas Moore, University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point Subject: Fossilized Turitella agate containing Elimia tenera (freshwater snails) and ostracods (seed shrimp)

Technique: Stereomicroscopy

Magnification: 7x

17th Place Charles Krebs, Charles Krebs Photography, Issaquah, Washington Subject: Stinging nettle trichome on leaf vein

Technique: Transmitted Light

Magnification: 100x

18th Place David Maitland, Feltwell, United Kingdom Subject: Coral sand

Technique: Brightfield

Magnification: 100x

19th Place Somayeh Naghiloo, Department of Plant Biology, University of Tabriz, Iran Subject: Floral primordia of Allium sativum (garlic)

Technique: Epi-Illumination