The Knife-Edge Scanning Microscope (KESM) was invented and
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...
ed in the late 1990s by
Bruce McCormick
Bruce Howard McCormick (1928–2007) was an American computer scientist, Emeritus Professor at the Department of Computer Science, and founding director of the Brain Networks Lab at Texas A&M University.
Biography
McCormick took his BS in Physi ...
at
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...
. The microscope is intended to produce
high-resolution
Image resolution is the detail an image holds. The term applies to digital images, film images, and other types of images. "Higher resolution" means more image detail.
Image resolution can be measured in various ways. Resolution quantifies how cl ...
data sets in order to reconstruct 3D
cellular structures.
The machine is capable of handling tissue volumes of 1 to 100mm
3, recording large volumes of tissue in a small amount of time (~7mm
2s
−1). The resolution and scanning speed of KESM is a novel method for imaging tissue at resolutions sufficient to reconstruct maps of cellular distribution and
morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
*Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
*Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...
. The technique preserves the alignment of serial sections accurately enough to reconstruct
neuron
A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa. N ...
al processes and microvasculature.
[Knife-edge scanning microscope (KESM): http://research.cs.tamu.edu/bnl/kesm.html]
References
Microscopes