Visual artifacts are anomalies during visual representation of e.g. digital graphics and imagery.
Many people who use their computers as a hobby experience artifacting due to a hardware malfunction. The cases can differ but the usual causes are:
The differing cases of visual artifacting can also differ between scheduled task(s).
In microscopy, an artifact is an apparent structural detail that is caused by the processing of the specimen and is thus not a legitimate feature of the specimen.
For example, a crush artifact is artificial elongation and distortion when smearing cells or tissue for microscopy.