H N Chapman | PubMed Health

PubMed1996

A characterisation of dark-field imaging of colloidal gold labels in a scanning transmission X-ray microscope.

While X-ray microscopes provide images of biological specimens for which the contrast is mainly due to the difference in the absorption of carbon and oxygen when X-rays transmitted through the specimen are detected, signals other than absorption can also be used to form images. Using the Stony Brook scanning transmission X-ray microscope at the National Synchrotron Light Source, high-angle dark-field images have been formed of cells labelled with colloidal gold, with and without silver enhancement. The high density of the colloidal gold particles, or the silver particles seeded by the gold, leads to a large scattering signal, and the fact that the particle diameters are comparable to the width of the microscope point spread function results in good localisation of the label with high contrast. The dark-field images can have a greater signal to noise ratio than bright-field images acquired with the same incident X-ray dose. The theory of dark-and bright-field imaging is reviewed. Theoretical calculations of scattering from gold and silver particles are presented and good agreement is found between these and experimental dark-field images of 30 nm diameter gold particles. The signal to noise ratios of experimental bright-and dark-field images are measured and found to be in agreement with theory. Images are presented of cells labelled by immunolabelling and in situ hybridisation.

Fibroblasts↗

PubMed1995

X-ray microscopy.

The subject of X-ray microscopy (high-resolution X-ray imaging of general nonperiodic structures), an area in which much progress has been made in recent years, is reviewed. The main techniques are briefly described. Achievable performance levels, which for many years were highly speculative, can now be understood with fair accuracy in terms of basic X-ray and specimen properties, and techniques have progressed to the point where actual results are nearing those levels. In terms of specimen size and imaging resolution, X-ray microscopies lie between electron and light microscopy, and are thus suited to imaging extremely large and complex structures; in addition, they demand little or no specimen preparation, and can be used to observe local composition and chemical state as well as structure. Thus X-rays, which have played the leading role in imaging crystallizable materials, may also prove to be highly valuable in the imaging of very large non-crystalline structures. Throughout the treatment, attention is paid to the relationships connecting the subject with X-ray crystallography.

Crystallography, X-Ray↗