Scan-Coil Delay Causes Anisotropic Signal Loss in Fast 4D-STEM
Abstract
Fast pixelated detectors are driving 4D-STEM toward microsecond dwell times, a regime in which the finite response of the scan deflection coils becomes comparable to the dwell time itself. Using direct probe imaging and sub-frame diffraction analysis, we document a significant intra-dwell scan-coil delay that systematically smears the recorded signal anisotropically along the fast scan direction, with a settling timescale of several tens of microseconds. We present a phase-correlation-based sub-frame alignment procedure that measures and corrects this smearing, and we assess its impact on focused and defocused 4D-STEM reconstructions over a range of scan step sizes. The correction restores signal across a broad range of spatial frequencies, with the largest gains at the large step sizes required for low-dose biological imaging. Because it operates on existing data with no modification to the microscope, the method offers a practical route to recovering signal that would otherwise be lost to scan-coil delay.
Related
- Luminal geometry and coiled coil length determine submembrane localization of type II transmembrane Golgi proteins
- Multiple lesions on a PET-scan
- A scan for repeat-mediated genomic disorders in clinical cases of male infertility
- Genome-wide scan for transmission ratio distortion in trios from the Norwegian MoBa cohort rules out moderate distortion at common variants
- Structural basis of coiled-coil domain-mediated inhibition of A. baumannii AbTir NAD+ nucleosidase activity
BibTeX
@misc{kumar2026scancoil,
title = {{Scan-Coil Delay Causes Anisotropic Signal Loss in Fast 4D-STEM}},
author = {Vishal Kumar and Andreas Jehle and Tizian Lorenzen and Julika Radecke and Knut Müller-Caspary and Massimo Kube and Henning Stahlberg},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.13106},
eprint = {2608.13106},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.13106},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Scan-Coil Delay Causes Anisotropic Signal Loss in Fast 4D-STEM
AU - Vishal Kumar
AU - Andreas Jehle
AU - Tizian Lorenzen
AU - Julika Radecke
AU - Knut Müller-Caspary
AU - Massimo Kube
AU - Henning Stahlberg
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/14
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.13106
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.13106
AB - Fast pixelated detectors are driving 4D-STEM toward microsecond dwell times, a regime in which the finite response of the scan deflection coils becomes comparable to the dwell time itself. Using direct probe imaging and sub-frame diffraction analysis, we document a significant intra-dwell scan-coil delay that systematically smears the recorded signal anisotropically along the fast scan direction, with a settling timescale of several tens of microseconds. We present a phase-correlation-based sub-frame alignment procedure that measures and corrects this smearing, and we assess its impact on focused and defocused 4D-STEM reconstructions over a range of scan step sizes. The correction restores signal across a broad range of spatial frequencies, with the largest gains at the large step sizes required for low-dose biological imaging. Because it operates on existing data with no modification to the microscope, the method offers a practical route to recovering signal that would otherwise be lost to scan-coil delay.
ER -