Problem with picture box

I have a picture box with a bitmap image within it. My problem is that the rectangular bitmap image has some unwanted white areas surrounding the wanted oval area. I've tried to make it so the picture's background will be transparent without success because the white shows up on a VB form anyway.

So is there anyway I can filter out the white through Visual Basic?

Thanks for any ideas.

does it have to be a bitmap? if not, just make it a gif, then make it transparent

You could always use BitBlt to Blt the picture trancparent....