3D microscopy

Muller, M., Squier, J., Wilson, K. R., and Brakenhoff, G. J. 1998a. 3D microscopy of transparent objects using third-harmonic generation. J. Microsc. 191 266-74. 

Naumov, A. N., Sidorov-Biryukov, D. A., Fedotov, A. B., and Zheltikov, A. M. 2001. Third-harmonic generation in focused beams as a method of 3D microscopy of a laser-produced plasma. Opt. Spectrosc. 90 778-83. 

Simmune can perform simulations with high-resolution representations of cellular morphology. The morphology modeler that is part of the simmune software package can transform 3D microscopy data into computational representations of cellular and extracellular structures. These structures can then be associated with cell types and extracellular compartments. A description of this option is, however, beyond the scope of this chapter. 

Sharpe, J., et al. Optical projection tomography as a tool for 3D microscopy and gene expression studies. Science 296(5567), 541—545 (2002)... 

Blomback, B., Carlsson, K., Hessel, B., Liljeborg.. A.. Procyk, R. and Aslimd, X. (1989) Xative fibrin gel networks observed by 3D microscopy permeation and Uirbidity. Biochim. Biophys. Acta, 997, 96-110. 

Recent digital 3D microscopy should also be added here. It enables useful surveys to be carried out on composite materials for locating sites of interest, which can then be studied with AFM and SNOM. A brief description is given in Ref. 3. The available enlargement is up to 5000-fold to the screen. For example, the nuclei of Fuligo varians are observed with a diameter of 3 mm (0.6 J,m) to 10 mm (2.0 jm). Combined use of 3D microscopy with nanoscopic techniques has appeared. " ... 

As acquisitions are digital, sampling constraints must be checked to maximize the resolution of the objective. The Nyquist theorem states that for a frequency-limited system, which is the case for any numerical aperture-limited objective with a given resolution limit r, a sampling A of half of the resolution is sufficient for the digital recording of the entire signal with no loss of information. For 3D microscopy, the theorem can be expressed for the lateral and axial directions as follows ... 

Keywords Polymer alloy 3D microscopy 3D digital image analysis Bicontinuous... 

In the present review, we will try to demonstrate that 3D microscopy has great advantages over the conventional methods to observe and analyze complex polymer structures. This review paper is organized in the following way. In Sect. 2, we briefly describe the basic principles of 3D microscopy that will be used later in this review paper. In Sect. 3, quantitative 3D image analysis for the 3D volume data on the basis of the geometry will be introduced. Section 4 is dedicated to the visualization of one of the transient... 

Figure 1 shows the spatial resolution of various types of microscopes and scattering methods. The figure includes 3D microscopy such as laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM), X-ray computerized tomography (X-ray CT), and transmission electron microtomography (TEMT). Although no experimental results obtained from the X-ray CT will be presented in the present review paper, we note that the microscopy [4] is particularly usefiil to... 

In the preceding section, two types of 3D microscopy were introduced. In some cases, it is sufficient to have 3D images of the structures in order to intuitively grasp their unique features. Actually, many researchers, in material science as well as in the medical and biological fields, seem to be content with 3D pretty pictures or the cross-sectional views of their 3D objects. This is merely observations , not structural analysis . 

Yet 3D microscopy gives much more structural information than either the conventional 2D microscopes or the scattering methods, most of which have never been acquired before. It is expected that the new structural information will clear up the root of unsolved physical problems. In the present section, we will introduce some quantitative analytical methods to extract such structural parameters from the 3D digital data. 

In some systems, the local shape of surfaces is significant in understanding the formation and stability of the morphologies and thus it can be a key structural measure to clarify the underlying physics. Surface curvatures are fundamental parameters characterizing the shape of surfaces in the differential geometry. From the volume data taken by the 3D microscopy, it is possible to determine the smface curvatures/or the first time. 

Let us describe another recent development in TEMT - new TEMT employed to cover mesoscaie structures. As mentioned in Section 2.20.2, there is a spatial gap in 3D microscopy (see Figure 1). In polymer science, the hierarchical nature of polymer stmctures has to be seamlessly examined from a few to several hundreds of nanometers. In block copolymer nanos-tmctures, for example, the smallest stmctural elements, such as spheres, cylinders, and lamellae, are of the order of several nanometers to several tens of nanometers, which can be examined by existing TEMT. The upper hierarchical stmcture of such stmctural elements is the grain. The size and internal domain orientation of the grains, the mesoscaie stmctures, are too large to be observed by existing TEMT. 

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