“…Small defined areas of the cuticular surface of mites were removed by ion etching to allow examination of the underlying structures. The first documentation of a successful application of the FIB for in situ sample preparation and microscopy of cells is the work of Ballerini et al 1 A comparison of the performances of a FIB machine, TEM, SEM, 14 and soft x-ray contact microscopy ͑SXCM͒ 8,15-18 is presented by Milani et al 19 Up to now, the FIB operation was done on Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Candida albicans, mites of the genus Halarachne, bacteria, human chondrocytes, lymphocytes, oocytes, and on a single gut epithelial cell. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]20,21 Although the authors pointed out many advantages of the use of the FIB in biomedicine, up to now no experimental data existed on the in situ sample preparation and application of the SIM and/or SEM to gross morphology and cell ultrastructure inspection of the very same sample.…”