The Lotus inclusion atlas is the laboratory's online and printed library of high-magnification photomicrographs covering inclusions in ruby, sapphire, spinel, and a widening range of other coloured stones. It is used as a working reference by trade gemmologists checking diagnostic features against a calibrated image set drawn from the laboratory's own examined material, and as a teaching aid in formal gemmology programmes.

What the atlas contains

Each entry typically pairs photomicrographs of an inclusion with notes on locality, treatment status, and the diagnostic significance of the feature. A single entry may show silk patterns in unheated Burmese ruby, alongside the same silk altered by heating, alongside a residue-bearing analogue from H(b)-type heated material - giving the user a side-by-side reference set rather than an isolated photograph.

Why it matters as a tool

Inclusion identification is taught largely from images, and the quality of the image library a gemmologist trains on shapes how quickly they can read a stone in the field. The Lotus atlas, alongside Koivula's Photoatlas series and the GIA online inclusion library, is one of the principal references the contemporary trade uses for that training.