Characterization of dentine structure in three dimensions using FIB-SEM

All biological tissues are three dimensional and contain structures that span a range of length scales from nanometres through to hundreds of millimetres. These are not ideally suited to current three-dimensional characterization techniques such as X-ray or transmission electron tomography. Such detailed morphological analysis is critical to understanding the structural features relevant to tissue function and designing therapeutic strategies intended to address structural deficiencies encountered in pathological states. We show that use of focused ion beam milling combined with scanning electron microscopy can provide three-dimensional information at nanometre resolution from biologically relevant volumes of material, in this case dentine.