Detailed knowledge of biological structure has been key in understanding biology at several levels of organisation, from organs to cells and proteins. Volume electron microscopy (volume EM) provides high resolution 3D structural information about tissues on the nanometre scale. However, the throughput rate of conventional electron microscopes has limited the volume size and number of samples that can be imaged. Recent improvements in methodology are currently driving a revolution in volume EM, making possible the structural imaging of whole organs and small organisms. In turn, these recent developments in image acquisition have created or stressed bottlenecks in other parts of the pipeline, like sample preparation, image analysis and data management. While the progress in image analysis is stunning due to the advent of automatic segmentation and server-based annotation tools, several challenges remain. Here we discuss recent trends in volume EM, emerging methods for increasing throughput and implications for sample preparation, image analysis and data management.

中文翻译：

---

方法创新如何为体积电子显微镜带来新前景


对生物结构的详细了解是理解从器官到细胞和蛋白质等多个组织层面的生物学的关键。体积电子显微镜 (volume EM) 提供纳米级组织的高分辨率 3D 结构信息。然而，传统电子显微镜的吞吐率限制了可成像样品的体积大小和数量。最近方法的改进正在推动体积电子显微镜的革命，使整个器官和小型生物体的结构成像成为可能。反过来，图像采集领域的最新发展也造成或加剧了流程其他部分的瓶颈，例如样品制备、图像分析和数据管理。尽管由于自动分割和基于服务器的注释工具的出现，图像分析取得了惊人的进展，但仍然存在一些挑战。在这里，我们讨论体积电子显微镜的最新趋势、提高通量的新兴方法以及对样品制备、图像分析和数据管理的影响。