At lower beam currents, FIB imaging resolution begins to rival the more familiar scanning electron microscope (SEM) in terms of imaging topography, however the FIB's two imaging modes, using secondary electrons and secondary ions, both produced by the primary ion beam, offer many advantages over SEM.
Another advantage of FIB secondary electron imaging is the fact that the ion beam does not alter the signal from fluorescent probes used in the labelling of proteins, thus creating the opportunity to correlate FIB secondary electron images with images obtained by fluorescence microscopes [REF].