Servier Medical Art: How to Use and Credit It

Servier Medical Art, usually shortened to SMART, is a free library of more than 3,000 medical illustrations run by the pharmaceutical company Servier. Students, researchers, and lecturers use it for slides, theses, posters, and papers because every image is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). You can copy, edit, and even use the images commercially, as long as you credit them correctly.

This guide covers what is in the library, what the license lets you do, the exact credit lines Servier asks for, how to edit the PowerPoint kits, and where SMART runs out so you need another source. All facts below were checked on smart.servier.com on October 7, 2026.

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Servier Medical Art at a glance

What is in the library

SMART organizes its downloads as 49 PowerPoint kits in 11 categories on the Image Kits by Category page. You can also grab everything at once as a single 170 MB zip.

There is also a newer set of Educational Tools: ready-made learning visuals of key body systems and mechanisms, useful for revision or teaching.

What we found inside a kit

We downloaded the Heart physiology kit to see what you actually get. The file is about 2.4 MB and has 22 slides. Almost everything on those slides is built from native PowerPoint shapes: we counted more than 6,500 shapes in 55 groups, and only 5 embedded bitmap images, which are slide backgrounds and the SMART logo. In practice that means the illustrations are editable vector drawings inside PowerPoint. You can ungroup a heart, recolor a single chamber, delete a label, or resize it without blurring.

The kit's own instruction slide says the same thing: ungroup the illustrations to change colors, labels, or elements, mix pieces from different slides, and keep them as vectors for clean scaling.

What the CC BY 4.0 license allows

The CC BY 4.0 license is one of the most permissive licenses in common use. Under it you may:

• Share: copy and redistribute the images in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially.
• Adapt: remix, crop, recolor, relabel, and build new figures on top of them, also for any purpose.

In return, you must follow two terms:

• Attribution: give appropriate credit, link to the license, and say if you changed the image. You must not imply that Servier endorses you or your work.
• No additional restrictions: you cannot add legal terms or technical locks that stop others from doing what the license allows.

Servier's own usage FAQ adds some practical answers on top of the license:

How to credit Servier Medical Art

Servier publishes its own recommended wording on the How to Cite page. The standard credit line is:

If you changed the image in any way (new colors, added labels, cropped, or combined with other art), switch "provided by" to "adapted from":

Where the credit goes depends on the format:

Servier's recommended wording for papers, slides, and videos. The text in each box is copied from the How to Cite page.

A few habits that keep credits clean:

• One credit per figure in a paper is clearer than a single line in the acknowledgments, especially when only some panels use SMART art.
• On slides, a small line at the bottom of each slide works, or a single credits slide at the end of the deck.
• On posters, add the line under the relevant figure or in the references block.
• Mixed figures that combine SMART art with your own drawings or other libraries should say "adapted from" and credit each source.

How to use SMART images in PowerPoint

1. Download the kit. Open the Image Kits by Category page and click the kit you need, for example Heart physiology. Each kit is a normal .pptx file.
2. Find the slide. Each slide holds one family of drawings, such as several heart views. Browse in Slide Sorter view to find the one you want quickly.
3. Copy the drawing. Select the grouped illustration and paste it into your own deck. It keeps its vector shapes.
4. Ungroup to edit. Right-click the drawing, choose Group, then Ungroup. You may need to ungroup more than once to reach a single part.
5. Recolor or relabel. Change fills to match your color palette, delete labels you do not need, and add your own text boxes and arrows.
6. Regroup and size it. Select all the parts and group them again so the drawing moves as one object.
7. Export for other tools. Right-click the group and choose Save as Picture. PNG works everywhere; recent versions of PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 can also save the selection as SVG if you want to keep editing in a vector editor.
8. Add the credit. Use the "adapted from" wording if you changed anything.

The Tips and Tricks page has more ideas, such as layering images with Bring to Front and Send to Back, and keeping image sizes consistent across a deck.

Using SMART art in papers and posters

SMART images are fine for journals because CC BY 4.0 allows reuse in commercial publications. Most of the work is making the figure meet the journal's technical rules:

• Export at print size. Build the figure at its final printed width, then export a high-resolution PNG or TIFF from PowerPoint, or save as SVG and finish it in a vector editor.
• Keep the credit in the legend. Journals usually ask you to declare third-party material. A CC BY credit line in the figure legend covers SMART art.
• Match your style. SMART has a recognizable soft, rounded look. If the rest of your figure is flat icons or photos, recolor the SMART pieces so the panels feel like one figure.

For general figure rules, see our guide on how to make scientific diagrams for research papers, and for a single-panel summary figure, how to create a graphical abstract.

Graphical Abstract Maker

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Where Servier Medical Art falls short

SMART is excellent for common anatomy and cell biology, but it has real gaps:

• No SVG download. You get PPTX and PNG. If you work in Illustrator, Inkscape, or Affinity, you need the PowerPoint step to get vectors out.
• Slow updates. New content arrives about once a year, so newer topics, specific signaling pathways, or rare conditions may not exist yet.
• One house style. Everything shares the same look. That is great for consistency, but it can clash with a lab's existing figure style.
• Generic views. You get a standard heart or kidney, not the exact cross-section, angle, or pathology your paper describes.
• English only. Labels and the site are in English; you will need to relabel for other languages.
• Not for branding. Servier advises against using the images in logos.

When you hit one of these gaps, you can combine SMART pieces with another library, draw the missing part yourself, or generate a custom illustration and credit SMART only for the parts you used.

Servier Medical Art vs other free sources

Bioicons mixes licenses, so check the label on each icon before you use it. CC BY-SA icons require you to share adaptations under the same license, which is stricter than CC BY.

Medical Illustration Generator

Describe the anatomy, procedure, or pathology you need and get a custom illustration for slides, posters, or patient education.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Summary

Servier Medical Art is one of the best free sources of medical illustrations: more than 3,000 images, a permissive CC BY 4.0 license, and editable PowerPoint kits. Download the kit you need, ungroup and adapt the drawings, and always add the credit line, switching to "adapted from" when you change anything. When the library does not have the exact view your work needs, fill the gap with another open library or a custom medical illustration.