Relative merits and limiting factors for x-ray and electron microscopy of thick, hydrated organic materials (2020 revised version) Ming Du1, and Chris Jacobsen2;3;4;∗ 1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston IL 60208, USA 2Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne IL 60439, USA 3Department of Physics & Astronomy, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston IL 60208, USA 4Chemistry of Life Processes Institute, Northwestern University, 2170 Campus Drive, Evanston IL 60208, USA ∗Corresponding author; Email:
[email protected] Abstract Electron and x-ray microscopes allow one to image the entire, unlabeled structure of hydrated mate- rials at a resolution well beyond what visible light microscopes can achieve. However, both approaches involve ionizing radiation, so that radiation damage must be considered as one of the limits to imaging. Drawing upon earlier work, we describe here a unified approach to estimating the image contrast (and thus the required exposure and corresponding radiation dose) in both x-ray and electron microscopy. This approach accounts for factors such as plural and inelastic scattering, and (in electron microscopy) the use of energy filters to obtain so-called \zero loss" images. As expected, it shows that electron microscopy offers lower dose for specimens thinner than about 1 µm (such as for studies of macromolecules, viruses, bacteria and archaebacteria, and thin sectioned material), while x-ray microscopy offers superior charac- teristics for imaging thicker specimen such as whole eukaryotic cells, thick-sectioned tissues, and organs. The required radiation dose scales strongly as a function of the desired spatial resolution, allowing one to understand the limits of live and frozen hydrated specimen imaging.