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 ...

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

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data sets in order to reconstruct 3D cellular structures. The machine is capable of handling tissue volumes of 1 to 100mm³, recording large volumes of tissue in a small amount of time (~7mm²s⁻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