Introduction to Relate: software for correlating AFM & EM analytics

Correlative microscopy has shown a steady increase in applications over the past decade, incorporating an expanding range of microscope technologies. From the localisation of specific areas within a specimen through to obtaining information about how to optimise manufacturing processes, correlative microscopy has grown in complexity. Obtaining information about a specimen using more than one imaging technique can help address questions about the relationship between sample properties, chemistry and structure, and is becoming an established practise across many different fields.

One of the ongoing challenges in correlative microscopy is the analysis of data. Correlating images from different types of microscopes can be demanding, particularly when dealing with variable data formats and scales. Additionally, imaging techniques that measure specimen properties, for example, topographical height information embedded in an AFM image, or x-ray counts per pixel embedded in EDS maps, are not catered for with simple qualitative image comparisons. Extracting quantitative information adds an additional, and important, dimension for correlative analysis, taking it one step further in obtaining constructive information about your sample.

Relate is a software product that aims to address some of the challenges in correlative microscopy and is specifically designed to optimise data integration between atomic force microscopy (AFM) and electron microscope analytics such as energy dispersive electron spectrometry (EDS) and electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD). Relate facilitates fast and easy correlation of complex multi-layered datasets from different microscopes and enables detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of samples in a documented format.