Three-dimensional reconstruction from a single oblique section of fish muscle M-band.

A new method of three-dimensional image reconstruction from electron micrographs is presented here, which enables a three-dimensional image to be produced from a single oblique section of a two- or three-dimensional crystal. The method, which is most powerful when the section is thin and the angle of obliquity small, has several potential advantages over the conventional method of reconstruction using tilted views of the section. In particular the accumulated electron dose on the specimen is much smaller and the reconstruction is not affected by changes in the thickness of the section during exposure to the electron beam. The method involves the solution of a generally almost singular set of linear projection equations, relating through the sectioning geometry the three-dimensional crystal density to the two-dimensional projected image density. This can be achieved most conveniently by linear least squares filtering. An application of the method to determine the structure of the M-band of fish muscle is described. The resulting map agrees well with that produced by the more conventional approach involving tilted views.