Fast imaging of millimeter-scale areas with beam deflection transmission electron microscopy

Zheng, Z.; Own, C. S.; Wanner, A. A.; Koene, R. A.; Hammerschmith, E. W.; Silversmith, W. M.; Kemnitz, N.; Tank, D. W.; Seung, H. S.

doi:10.1101/2022.11.23.517701

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2022.11.23.517701

Fast imaging of millimeter-scale areas with beam deflection transmission electron microscopy

Zheng, Z.·Own, C. S.·Wanner, A. A.·Koene, R. A.·Hammerschmith, E. W.·Silversmith, W. M.·Kemnitz, N.·Tank, D. W.·Seung, H. S.

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Abstract

Serial section transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has proven to be one of the leading methods for millimeter-scale 3D imaging of brain tissues at nanoscale resolution. It is important to further improve imaging efficiency to acquire larger and more brain volumes. We report here a three fold increase in the speed of TEM by using a beam deflecting mechanism to enable highly efficient acquisition of multiple image tiles (nine) for each motion of the mechanical stage. For millimeter-scale areas, the duty cycle of imaging doubles to more than 30%, yielding a net average imaging rate of 0.3 gigapixels per second. If fully utilized, an array of beam deflection TEMs should be capable of imaging a dataset of cubic millimeter scale in several weeks.

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Zheng, Z., Own, C. S., Wanner, A. A., Koene, R. A., Hammerschmith, E. W., Silversmith, W. M., Kemnitz, N., Tank, D. W., Seung, H. S.. 2022-11-24. Fast imaging of millimeter-scale areas with beam deflection transmission electron microscopy. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.11.23.517701

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