Fast imaging of millimeter-scale areas with beam deflection transmission electron microscopy

Serial section transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has proven to be one of the leading methods for millimeter-scale 3D imaging of brain tissues at nanoscale resolution. It is important to further improve imaging efficiency to acquire larger and more brain volumes. We report here a threefold increase in the speed of TEM by using a beam deflecting mechanism to enable highly efficient acquisition of multiple image tiles (nine) for each motion of the mechanical stage. For millimeter-scale areas, the duty cycle of imaging doubles to more than 30%, yielding a net average imaging rate of 0.3 gigapixels per second. If fully utilized, an array of four beam deflection TEMs should be capable of imaging a dataset of cubic millimeter scale in five weeks. The authors report a tripling in the speed of serial section transmission electron microscopy using a beam deflecting mechanism. This innovation enables the acquisition of multiple image tiles for each stage motion, yielding a net imaging rate of 0.3 gigapixels per second for millimeter-scale areas.