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EDS Quantitation and Application to Biology

  • Chapter
Principles of Analytical Electron Microscopy

Abstract

The quantitative x-ray microanalysis of biological tissue sections differs strikingly from that of inorganic specimens in several ways:

  1. (a)

    Measurements of local concentrations in biological tissue sections may be misleading because the elemental distributions may have been altered inadvertently during the preparation of the specimens—elements may have been largely lost, or displaced, during preparation.

  2. (b)

    Even if a section as prepared is accepted as a proper object for measurement, the procedures available for measurements in thin organic specimens are subject to systematic errors arising from assumptions about section uniformity or from beam damage.

  3. (c)

    A given procedure may produce a measurement of concentration that is technically correct but biologically irrelevant or ambiguous. For example, in a section stained with a heavy metal, the measurement of amount of element per kilogram of stained specimen is not in itself useful when much of the mass may consist of the metal stain. A less blatant example: For electrolyte elements not bound to organic matrix but almost entirely “free” in aqueous solution in living tissue, the relevant concentration for the physiologist is millimoles (mmol) of element per liter of water. If millimoles of element per total mass of tissue are simply measured, quite different values may be obtained for regions where there are actually identical values of mmol of element per liter of water but different aqueous fractions (i. e., differing values for mass of water/total mass).

  4. (d)

    Biological tissues are quite variable. One must realize that there may be inhomogeneities within a tissue—gradients, for example, within the cytoplasm of a single cell; concentrations within an organism may vary with time or physiological condition; differences will exist among individuals of the same species.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, England

    T. A. Hall & B. L. Gupta

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  1. T. A. Hall
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  2. B. L. Gupta
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA

    David C. Joy

  2. Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

    Alton D. Romig Jr.

  3. Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA

    Joseph I. Goldstein

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Hall, T.A., Gupta, B.L. (1986). EDS Quantitation and Application to Biology. In: Joy, D.C., Romig, A.D., Goldstein, J.I. (eds) Principles of Analytical Electron Microscopy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2037-9_6

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