Areas of Imaging Research

The main difficulty with STM and SFM techniques is the problem of tip imaging. Neither technique is recommended for obtaining accurate measurements of edge profiles of vertical or undercut surfaces. In addition, SFM tips cannot accurately image the lateral dimensions of features with sides steeper than 55° at present. Obtaining SFM tips with more suitable aspect ratios is an area of active research. 

Another issue for quantification is the effect of the finite resolution of PET/SPECT relative to small structures being imaged. This can result in the so called Partial Volume Effect which is characterized by an underestimation of the true radioactivity. This is an area of increasing research, but is not a major limitation when there is not a large difference between patients and controls in the volume of... 

In addition, we also envisage MALDI-MS imaging becoming more mainstream in the area of carbohydrate research, offering the added dimension of spatial information on top of the specificity of the structural information that MS delivers. 

Characterization of the state, nature and structure of the starch granule surface has been somewhat limited. Over the past few years, however, substantial progress in starch surface chemical analysis and surface imaging has been made. The following two sections detail recent developments in these two new areas of starch research. 

One important area of resist research in recent years is the development of plasma-developable resist systems. The aim of plasma developable resists is to use nonsolvent, all dry development methods to avoid the problems of swelling and consequent resolution limitation associated with conventional resists. Much of the semiconductor fabrication process now utilizes plasma techniques as they are capable of providing high resolution images. An important consideration in this is that the plasma-developable resist images should stand up well to the plasma etching treatments. 

The human visual system (HVS) is powerful and exceeds the performance of artificial visual systems in almost all areas of comparison. Researchers have, therefore, studied the HVS extensively to ascertain the most efficient and effective methods of communicating information to the eye. An important component of this work has been the development of models of how humans see in an effort to improve image... 

The major use of STM is in the research area of imaging atomic structures on clean conducting and semi-conducting surfaces, under UHV conditions. SFM, on the other hand, is widely used throughout industry as a very high resolution surface profilometer to monitor surface roughness, defects, and man-made micro or nano structures. 

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