Nanoscale imaging of untreated mammalian cells in a medium with low radiation damage using scanning electron-assisted dielectric microscopy.

ABSTRACT: Imaging of untreated living cells in a medium at a nanometre-scale resolution under physiological conditions is a significant challenge. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is widely used to observe cells in various atmospheric holders or special equipment. However, untreated biological specimens in aqueous solution generally incur heavy radiation damage from the direct electron beam (EB); and these images exhibit very poor contrast. Therefore, a new method for generating high-contrast images of living cells under physiological conditions without radiation damage has been strongly desired. Here, we demonstrate the first nanoscale observation of living cultured mammalian cells using our newly developed scanning-electron assisted dielectric microscopy (SE-ADM) method with a culture dish holde

SUBMITTER: Okada T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4931576 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature