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Updated: Jun 18, 2026

Preparation and Observation of Thick Biological Samples by Scanning Transmission Electron Tomography
Published on: March 12, 2017
Tomography of asymmetric bulk specimens imaged by scanning electron microscopy
1Electron Microscope Unit, University of Cape Town, 7701 Cape Town, South Africa. jeremydavidwoodward@gmail.com
Abstract:
The scanning electron microscope produces nanometer-resolution surface images of biological samples preserved in a life-like state. Extracting three-dimensional information from these two-dimensional images has been the subject of long and ongoing research. We present here a general method and theoretical basis for reconstructing the surfaces of SEM specimens imaged from multiple directions by back-projection. The resulting reconstructions are faithful representations of the original specimen geometry, even when the input images are blurred and have low signal-to-noise ratio.
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