Atomic force microscopy imaging of the human trigeminal ganglion

This paper describes an investigation of gangliocytes via imaging semithin sections of two human trigeminal ganglia with an atomic force microscope (AFM). Whereas semithin sections are usually employed for transmission electron microscopy, we adopted this special type of sample preparation for our AFM studies to extract topographical data from the gangliocyte itself and from the nucleus, the nucleolus, the crystal-arranged lipofuscin granules, and the cell-surrounding mantle cells; simultaneously we characterized the samples with error signal mode. This AFM-related technique revealed no information concerning friction force and elasticity due to the presence of the embedding material (epoxy), but it gave additional topographical contrast. These are the first images of the human trigeminal ganglion by AFM.