Preface
Like most microscopists, I didn’t fall in the mould as an undergraduate student. At
the time I was certain I was destined to be a molecular biologist, never visualizing
the actual samples I would be working on. I told myself that my research career
would never involve any form of imaging, since I did not think it was interesting.
A couple of years down the track I started my postgraduate studies and found
myself, within 2 weeks of starting, in front of my first transmission electron
microscope.
Almost immediately, I loved it, it must have been my inner artist shaping my future.
However, I was frustrated by the fact that I was looking at a three-dimensional world in
only two dimensions, so I set myself a challenge that I would one day progress to
three-dimensional electron microscopy despite the fact that at that time it appeared to
be nothing more than a good science fiction novel. Indeed, only a few specialized
laboratories had the expertise to obtain three-dimensional datasets with an electron
microscope. So instead, I spent the first decade of my research career honing my
sectioning skills, as well as a few diamond knives, eventually progressing from single
sections to a large number of serial sections. Since then a few years, along with a few
laboratories and core facilities, have gone by, and the technologies permitting visualization of the “real” three-dimensional nanoworld have evolved and are now
accessible to most researchers around the world.
Overall, it has been an interesting journey since the first book on electron
tomography, edited by Joachim Frank, appeared in 1992. Even though no major
new concepts have emerged in the last twenty years, the technology has evolved
steadily. From stacks of thin serial sections to acquisition of tilt series in a transmission electron microscope, to even tilt series of serial sections, we have increased
the resolution in the third dimension by an order of magnitude. While the microscopes have moved back from 400–1000 kV to 300 kV with the dissemination of
field emission guns, the sample thickness of 300–500 nm has remained constant.
Now it seems that the field is slowly moving towards scanning transmission
electron tomography, which permits an increase in the thickness of the sample by at
v
Like most microscopists, I didn’t fall in the mould as an undergraduate student. At
the time I was certain I was destined to be a molecular biologist, never visualizing
the actual samples I would be working on. I told myself that my research career
would never involve any form of imaging, since I did not think it was interesting.
A couple of years down the track I started my postgraduate studies and found
myself, within 2 weeks of starting, in front of my first transmission electron
microscope.
Almost immediately, I loved it, it must have been my inner artist shaping my future.
However, I was frustrated by the fact that I was looking at a three-dimensional world in
only two dimensions, so I set myself a challenge that I would one day progress to
three-dimensional electron microscopy despite the fact that at that time it appeared to
be nothing more than a good science fiction novel. Indeed, only a few specialized
laboratories had the expertise to obtain three-dimensional datasets with an electron
microscope. So instead, I spent the first decade of my research career honing my
sectioning skills, as well as a few diamond knives, eventually progressing from single
sections to a large number of serial sections. Since then a few years, along with a few
laboratories and core facilities, have gone by, and the technologies permitting visualization of the “real” three-dimensional nanoworld have evolved and are now
accessible to most researchers around the world.
Overall, it has been an interesting journey since the first book on electron
tomography, edited by Joachim Frank, appeared in 1992. Even though no major
new concepts have emerged in the last twenty years, the technology has evolved
steadily. From stacks of thin serial sections to acquisition of tilt series in a transmission electron microscope, to even tilt series of serial sections, we have increased
the resolution in the third dimension by an order of magnitude. While the microscopes have moved back from 400–1000 kV to 300 kV with the dissemination of
field emission guns, the sample thickness of 300–500 nm has remained constant.
Now it seems that the field is slowly moving towards scanning transmission
electron tomography, which permits an increase in the thickness of the sample by at
v