Correlative Scanning Electron and Super-Resolution Structured Illumination Microscopy

Correlative microscopy techniques are used for many different applications in the biological sciences because the comparison of different imaging methods allows researchers to gain more and often complementary information about their samples. Correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) methods have been developed to preserve biological samples to withstand the harsh environments necessary for electron microscopy. After first being imaged using widefield (WF) and super-resolution structured illumination fluorescence microscopy (SIM), a NanoSuit chemical treatment was applied to a mammalian tissue sample before imaging with scanning electron microscopy (SEM). This was done to compare the image quality and resolution of each technique. SEM yields higher resolution and offers validation of results from SIM.