A Simple and Inexpensive Route to Remote Electron Microscopy
Edgar Völkl, Larry F. Allard, T.A. Nolan, D. Hill, Michael Lehmann · Proceedings annual meeting Electron Microscopy Society of America · 1996
Due to the availability of fast computer networks such as Ethernet, FDDI and ATM, the idea of Telemicroscopy, including running electron microscopes from remote locations has gained momentum. Fan, Ellisman, Zaluzec and Parvin, have discussed aspects of systems which support such capabilities. In each of these reports the authors describe new stand-alone software packages that are required to run their systems. In order to make remote microscopy more universally available, we have chosen to expand de facto standard commercial software to provide for computerized microscope control and remote control. All of the major instruments in our user facility have been converted to digital operation and the darkroom has been abandoned completely. It is a logical extension of digital imaging to provide for computer control of the instrument operation, since the instrument parameters can be adjusted using feedback from analysis of the digital image. Digital image recording and display typically uses commercial software such as DigitalMicrograph© (which controls e.g. the CCD camera on the HF-2000). This program provides the four capabilities necessary to implement instrument control. It allows camera control,provides image processing tools, incorporates a scripting language and also allows C-code to be implemented.