At the August M&M-2006 meeting in Chicago, we were standing next to our poster titled A Different Kind of Microscopy: Analyzing Features with an Automated Electron Beam when an acquaintance with long experience in electron microscopy wandered by. After a glance at the poster title, he challenged: “What's different about that?” Upon hearing our summary he asked (with what we took to be an encouraging tone of voice): “Are you going to publish this?” We had enough similar reactions from others to make that seem a good idea, and this is the result.

This discussion should begin by noting that the operative word in the title is “different,” not “new.” In point of fact, the foundations for the technique were laid in the 1970s when some workers began putting scanning electron microscopes and microprobes under software control by interfacing them to the “minicomputers” that powered the computerized x-ray analyzer units then entering the market. Even prior to this, there were a few “hard-wired” image analyzers that mechanized the process of extracting information from microscope images. Thus, automated analysis of features via an electron beam instrument is hardly a new concept.