Medical examiners can now use the benefits and extensive functions of the Electron Microscope. Electron Microscopes are scientific instruments that use a beam of highly energetic electrons to examine objects on a very fine scale. This examination can yield the following information like Topography, The surface features of an object or how it looks, its texture; direct relation between these features and materials properties ;Morphology, The shape and size of the particles making up the object; direct relation between these structures and materials properties like ductility, strength, reactivity; Composition, The elements and compounds that the object is composed of and the relative amounts of them; direct relationship between composition and materials properties like melting point, reactivity, hardness; How the atoms are arranged in the object; direct relation between these arrangements and materials properties In this kind of microscope, electrons are speeded up in a vacuum until their wavelength is extremely short, only one hundred-thousandth that of white light.

Beams of these fast moving electrons are focused on a cell sample and are absorbed or scattered by the cell’s parts so as to form an image on an electron sensitive photographic plate. If pushed to the limit, electron microscopes can make it possible to view objects as small as the diameter of an atom. Most electron microscopes used to study biological material can see down to about 10 angstroms an incredible feat, for although this does not make atoms visible, it does allow researchers to distinguish individual molecules of biological importance. In effect, it can magnify objects up to 1 million times. Nevertheless, all electron microscopes suffer from a serious drawback. Since no living specimen can survive under their high vacuum, they cannot show the ever-changing movements that characterize a living cell. Using an instrument the size of his palm, Anton van Leeuwenhoek was able to study the movements of one celled organisms.

Modern descendants of van Leeuwenhoek’s light microscope can be over 6 feet tall, but they continue to be indispensable to cell biologists because, unlike electron microscopes, light microscopes enable the user to see living cells in action. The primary challenge has been to enhance the contrast between pale cells and their paler surroundings so that cell structures and movement can be seen more easily. To do this they have devised ingenious strategies involving video cameras, polarized light, digitizing computers, and other techniques that are yielding vast improvements in contrast, fueling a renaissance in light microscopy. A light microscope, even one with perfect lenses and perfect illumination, simply cannot be used to distinguish objects that are smaller than half the wavelength of light. White light has an average wavelength of 0.55 micrometers, half of which is 0.275 micrometers. Any two lines that are closer together than 0.275 micrometers will be seen as a single line, and any object with a diameter smaller than 0.275 micrometers will be invisible or, at best, show up as a blur. To see tiny particles under a microscope, scientists must bypass light altogether and use a different sort of illumination, one with a shorter wavelength.