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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Mar 1.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Methods. 2014 Aug 3;11(9):927–930. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.3043

Figure 1. Data collection strategies in MicroED.

Figure 1

(a-b) The initial data collection strategy termed “Still Diffraction” consists of rotating the stage in discrete steps between exposures. This provides data in the form of 2D slices through the 3D reciprocal space (a), and while this is sufficient for structure determination, the data are inherently incomplete because most reflections are only partially recorded (b). (c-d) The improved “Continuous Rotation” method for MicroED samples the reciprocal space continuously as the crystal is rotated (c), which yields much more complete and accurate measurements of reflection intensities (d). In the examples shown here originating from two different crystals, the reflections on the left side of the still diffraction are missing due to crystal orientation while they are present in the continuous rotation data because reciprocal space is being more completely sampled (c versus d, respectively).