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The benefit of thresholding carbon layers in electron tomographic tilt series by intensity downshifting
Author(s) -
GONTARD LIONEL C.,
CINTAS JESÚS,
BORKOWSKI RAFAL E. DUNIN
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of microscopy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.569
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1365-2818
pISSN - 0022-2720
DOI - 10.1111/jmi.12498
Subject(s) - thresholding , tilt (camera) , electron tomography , materials science , tomography , preprocessor , intensity (physics) , segmentation , series (stratigraphy) , optics , computer science , artificial intelligence , computer vision , geology , nanotechnology , physics , mathematics , geometry , image (mathematics) , transmission electron microscopy , paleontology , scanning transmission electron microscopy
Summary When performing electron tomography, tilt series of images are often acquired from samples that contain unwanted carbonaceous material, such as an embedding resin, a thin carbon support film or hydrocarbon contamination. The presence of such layers can introduce artefacts in reconstructions, obscuring features of interest. Here, we illustrate the benefit of preprocessing a high‐angle annular dark‐field tomographic tilt series by thresholding unwanted low‐density materials using a simple intensity downshifting procedure. The resulting tomograms have fewer artefacts and segmentation can be performed more accurately. We present two representative examples taken from studies of catalyst nanoparticles and amyloid plaque core material from the human brain.