Fig. 1.

One simple form of tomography array production. The specimen is fixed and embedded in an acrylic resin. The resulting resin block (a) is then trimmed to orient the embedded specimen for sectioning on an ultramicrotome (b). The standard ultramicrotome action automatically produces a ribbon of serial ultrathin sections on a water surface (c–e). The ribbon is then transferred to the surface of a microscope coverslip (f) or other solid material. Different array production methods place multiple ribbons or multiple individual sections onto varied solid substrates