Loss of Electron Microscope Images
More than 97% of electron microscope images remain unpublished, according to a large-scale analysis.
A study analyzed scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images produced at a single core facility for over a decade, finding that out of 152,000 evaluated images, only 2% were published in scientific papers.
Specifically, 2.6% of SEM images and 1.6% of TEM images were published in journals, resulting in a significant loss of microscopy data.
‘Importantly, this loss is not due to poor quality,’ notes study co-author Valentine Ananikov.
This loss of data is significant, as it could be a valuable training aid for AI.
Author's summary: Most electron microscope images are lost.