Multimedia Gallery - 3-D Imaging of Mammalian Cells With Ion-Abrasion SEM

A melanoma cell viewed by an SEM using 3-D imaging method

February 9, 2009

3-D Imaging of Mammalian Cells With Ion-Abrasion SEM

"3-D Imaging of Mammalian Cells with Ion-Abrasion Scanning Electron Microscopy"

The delicate swirls of pink and gold in this image could have come from Botticelli's brush, but there's nothing angelic about the subject, a melanoma cell. It is seen here by an ionabrasion scanning electron microscope that uses a method of 3-D imaging being developed at the National Cancer Institute. The microscope sends beams of gallium ions across an object, blasting away layers of the surface 20 nanometers at a time. By scanning each newly created surface, the microscope can compile 3-D images with unprecedented detail and resolution, says image creator Donald Bliss, a medical illustrator at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Md. The images show almost too much detail. "It's like looking at a bowl of spaghetti suspended in clear Jell-O," he says. So Bliss chose to highlight some of the data. Here, he shows the nucleus as the dark sphere, engulfed by mitochondria (in pink) and endoplasmic reticulum (in gold).

This image was tied for honorable mention in the Illustration category of the 2008 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge (SciVis). The competition is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the journal Science. To learn more about the SciVis competition, see the SciVis Special Report Here. (Date of Image: 2008)

Credit: Donald Bliss and Sriram Subramaniam, National Library of Medicine, NIH

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