Density-dependent colour scanning electron microscopy (DDC-SEM). Applications in the study of calcified tissues and visual impact

Abstract

Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) is widely used as a technique for materials characterization. It has also been successfully applied to the imaging of biological samples, providing invaluable insights into the topography, morphology and composition of biological structures. A particular method combining different SEM detectors, named Density-Dependent Coloured SEM (DDC-SEM), has proven to be most useful for the identification and visualization of minerals in soft tissues. The method consists of a manipulation of original greyscale SEM images to produce coloured images that provide both topography and density information for samples with components of different densities. Here we provide a discussion on how to use DDC-SEM to aid the visualization and intuitive understanding of pathological calcification. This method has become popular not only for its scientific improvement of conventional SEM greyscale images, but also for its aesthetical merits.