GAUSS-EM: Guided accumulation of ultrathin serial sections with a static magnetic field for volume electron microscopy

Abstract

Serial sectioning electron microscopy of millimeter-scale 3D anatomical volumes requires the collection of thousands of ultrathin sections. Here we report a high-throughput automated approach, GAUSS-EM, utilizing a static magnetic field to collect and densely pack thousands of sections onto individual silicon wafers. The method is capable of sectioning hundreds of microns of tissue per day at section thicknesses down to 35 nm. Relative to other automated volume electron microscopy approaches, GAUSS-EM democratizes the ability to collect large 3D EM volumes because it is simple and inexpensive to implement. We present two exemplar EM volumes of a zebrafish eye and mouse olfactory bulb collected with the method.