Computer reconstruction gives microscopy 100-fold precision boost

Cornell University, US, scientists have devised a way to overcome frustrations researchers can face with high resolution microscopy techniques that aren’t precise enough. Itai Cohen and James Sethna’s teams boost colloid image precision 10–100-fold in under a day, by comparing images with computer reconstructions costing around $0.10 (£0.08) an hour to run. The approach is ‘a universal method of scientific image analysis that extracts all the useful information theoretically contained in a complex image’, the Cornell teams claim.