For those who live with inflammatory bowel disease, the immune system has become the enemy within — attacking the very tissue it was meant to defend. Researchers have now brought a new kind of clarity to this internal conflict, using a spatial imaging platform called ChipCytometry to map, with molecular precision, which immune cells are present in diseased colon tissue and exactly where they stand. In ulcerative colitis, helper T cells surge and carry a protein that governs immune trafficking; in Crohn's disease, antibody-producing plasma cells accumulate while natural killer cells recede. The