Occasionally the seminal vesicles may develop cysts, tumors, or other problems. Seminal vesicle cysts most commonly become recognized during the years of greatest reproductive activity. When small, the cysts are often asymptomatic and are usually only discovered incidentally during certain medical examinations. Larger cysts may produce a variety of symptoms, including frequent urinary tract infections, pain during ejaculation, pelvic, abdominal, or perineal pain, dysuria, hematuria, and infertility.

In the digital image above, a sample of rat seminal vesicle tissue is presented that was labeled with the fluorophore Oregon Green 488 conjugated to wheat germ agglutinin, a lectin that selectively binds to sialic acid residues. Wheat germ agglutinin conjugates are often used as probes for the Golgi network in mammalian tissues and cells. The sample was also stained with Alexa Fluor 568 conjugated to phalloidin and Hoechst 33342, which target the cytoskeletal F-actin network and nuclear DNA, respectively. Images were recorded in grayscale with a 12-bit digital camera coupled to a Nikon Eclipse 80i microscope equipped with bandpass emission fluorescence filter optical blocks. During the processing stage, individual image channels were pseudocolored with RGB values corresponding to each of the fluorophore emission spectral profiles.