A model based atomic resolution tomographic algorithm

Tomography with high angular annular dark field scanning transmission electron microscopy at atomic resolution can be greatly improved if one is able to take advantage of prior knowledge. In this paper we present a reconstruction technique that explicitly takes into account the microscope parameters and the atomic nature of the projected object. This results in a more accurate estimate of the atomic positions and in a good resistance to noise. The reconstruction is a maximum likelihood estimator of the object. Moreover, the limits to the precision have been explored, allowing for a prediction of the amount of expected noise in the reconstruction for a certain experimental setup. We believe that the proposed reconstruction technique can be generalized to other tomographic experiments. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.