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.

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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.

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