[Improvement of the contrast of electron microscope images by the optical shadow method]

Amplitude contrast of images of weak phase and amplitude objects can be strengthened almost twice as compared to standard light-pole contrast by means of shadow method of image formation without special contrasting of the objects. In spite of the contour effects (electron-microscopic attenuation) appearing at image formation by asymmetrical shadow method, the quantitative interpretation of such image is quite possible. The symmetrical shadow image (image with cone illumination) is more complexly realized than the asymmetric one, but it has some additional advantages. Particularly efficient suppression of background noises is there possible. Several symmetrical shadow images can be synthetized by the differential method with or without colour coding into the final image with the signal/noise ratio increased by an order.