Unpublished Electron Microscope Images
More than 97% of electron microscope images remain unpublished, according to a large-scale analysis.
A study analyzed scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images produced at a single core facility for over a decade, evaluating over 152,000 images.
- Only 2.6% of SEM images were published in journals.
- Only 1.6% of TEM images were published in journals.
‘Importantly, this loss is not due to poor quality,’ notes study co-author Valentine Ananikov.
The loss of these images means that huge datasets, which could be valuable for training AI, are being lost.
Author's summary: Most electron microscope images are never published.