Automated Tilt Series Acquisition Software
EM-TOMO is a software for automatic acquisition of tomographic tilt series under low-dose conditions which is compatible with nearly all TEM types equipped with remote control and computer-controlled goniometer. Turn key solutions are available for e.g. FEI Tecnai12/20/30, Polara, Titan Krios, Hitachi H-9500, JEOL JEM-1230/1400/2010/2100/2200/3100/3200FSC, Philips CM100/120/200/300 and Zeiss 912/922, Libra120/200, Kronos.
EM-TOMO includes tools for automatic focusing. A tracking routine compensates for tilt or drift induced image shifts for each projection. A low-dose utility for all alignment procedures minimizes the electron dose applied to the specimen as all corrections can be performed on adjacent areas. Thus, the area of interest is merely exposed to the dose intended for the image acquisition. Furthermore, the batch function processes several tomographic positions of different areas of interest in one step including recentering in X/Y and correction of Z height (for compensating stage inaccuracies). This allows a high throughput data acquisition especially designed for collecting data in cryo EM.
- Automated acquisition of tomographic tilt series under low-dose conditions
- Embedded navigator, i.e. position definition starting from the whole grid up to the area of interest
- Drag-and-drop based embedded navigation tool using image/beam shift or stage
- Compensation of tilt-induced specimen displacement and drift using image and beam shift
- Integrated auto-focus and auto-eucentric
- Limited TEM image shift range is compensated by automated goniometer correction
- Multiple series acquisition of one tomographic position: Previously recorded tracking images can be used as “anchor images“ for acquiring the whole series from one direction
- Multiple acquisition at different tomographic positions under low-dose conditions (batch tomography)
- Typical execution time for one tilt step, including displacement and focus correction (depending on TEM type, camera type, and number of positions): 5 –120 sec
- Image area/resolution can be increased by tiling
- For fast recognition of problems the already acquired images can be shown as video sequence during the acquisition (tilt player)