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These incredibly detailed images are so complex, you'd be forgiven for thinking they were close-up photographs of living cells or images created using algorithms on a computer.

But, instead they're meticulously handcrafted sculptures built using just strips of paper and a scalpel.

The artwork, called Outbreak, was designed to show some of the smallest structures found inside the human body, including cells, microbes, pathogens and neurons.

London-based paper artist used images and diagrams of microbes, bacteria and cells to create an exhibition called Outbreak. Each petri dish (pictured) contains a loose representation of bacteria. This bacteria is seen spreading across the petri dishes to represent how it 'metaphorically threatens' the development of healthcare

The installation was created by London graduate Rogan Brown.

Although each of the images are based on the human biome, which includes microorganisms that live on humans, they are not designed to be scientifically accurate.

They are, instead, a combination of structures and images within these cells, across parts of the body.

Outbreak was inspired by Brown's participation in a seminar held at the Eden Project in Cornwall.

'The Eden Project recently won a Wellcome Trust grant to create an exhibition space based on the Human Biome - the bacteria that scientists are only now beginning to understand,' Brown told MailOnline.

'The seminar was attended by a number of eminent bacteriologists and a handful of artists.

'My contribution was really to create a stylised visual representation of this largely invisible microbiological world: I wanted to make something based on electronmicroscope photos of microbes, which gives people a glimpse of this strange, exotic world and that encourages them to see the beauty in it.

The artwork (pictured) was designed to show some of the smallest structures found inside the human body, including cells, microbes, pathogens and neurons. Although each of the images are based on the human biome, which includes microorganisms that live on humans, they are not designed to be scientifically accurate

The left-hand image is a representation of a spore, found in bacteria, that is a resistant structure used to help the bacteria survive. The right-hand image is called Bacteria Deleria. It is designed to represent the bacteria that can lead to delirium and confusion, such as those found in brain infections

This sculpture, called Clone, is designed to represent a group of identical cells that share a 'common ancestry.' All the granulosa cells in a Graafian follicle, in the ovaries for example, are clones

'This is part of an attempt to change perceptions about microbes from negative to positive as the vast majority of the bacteria in our bodies play a very positive and important role in helping us to break down food, extract vitamins as well as fighting illness and so.'

Brown's latest project work took four months to complete, and many of the pieces were limited.

This is because visual representations of bacteria are often decontextualised electronmicroscope photos, or simplified diagrammatic representations.

'The lack of visual material is in part due to the infinitesimally small size of bacteria and also to the fact that scientists have little interest in visual representations.

'They "see" microbes through complex experiments using very complex laboratory equipment; aesthetics don't really interest them.

Other art in Brown's collection show cross sections of fruit kernels. Kernels are typically the softer, usually edible part, contained in the shell of a nut or the stone of a fruit. This paper sculpture reveals the complex structure inside a kernel, such as those found in cherries

The left-hand image shows the cross-section of a pod, similar to a cocoa pod. The seeds of the pod are shown around the centre, protected by the outer shell. Meanwhile, the right-hand image shows the cross section of the seed, that sits inside the pod

'So the images you see in Outbreak are imagined representations based on looking through thousands of pictures and diagrams of microbes at different scales and in different states.'

Brown continued that it is the repeated patterns and motifs and fractals of the structures that inspired him.

'Science is at a very early stage in its understanding of bacteria in the human body; for the moment the scientists are merely identifying the varieties of microbes that inhabit us; the scale of the biome is so vast that it will take many years to do just this, to label and name the different types of microbe.

This image represents the growth of bacteria. Brown told MailOnline that it is the repeated patterns and motifs and fractals of the structures that inspired him. He said: 'The aim is to convey the limitations of science when confronted by the immense power, complexity and, above all, scale of nature'

Brown's work, including this image of small kernel, is inspired in part by the tradition of scientific drawing and model making, and particularly the work of artist-scientists such as Ernst Haeckel

'I make reference to this in the installation by the use of the Petri dish-style domes each containing a different microbial form, but the process is overrun by the sheer excess of bacteria that metaphorically threatens the whole project.

'The aim is to convey the limitations of science when confronted by the immense power, complexity and, above all, scale of nature.'

Other artwork in Brown's portfolio shows the cross section of fruit kernels and cocoa pods.

They are designed to show the complex nature of these organisms and, again, are visual representations rather than scientifically accurate portrayal.

'I am inspired in part by the tradition of scientific drawing and model making, and particularly the work of artist-scientists such as Ernst Haeckel,' continued Brown.

'But although my approach involves careful observation and detailed 'scientific' preparatory drawings these are always superseded by the work of the imagination; everything has to be refracted through the prism of the imagination, estranged and in some way transformed.'