Software for drift compensation, particle tracking and particle analysis of high‐speed atomic force microscopy image series

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) image acquisition is performed by raster‐scanning a faint tip with respect to the sample by the use of a piezoelectric stage that is guided by a feedback system. This process implies that the resulting images feature particularities that distinguish them from images acquired by other techniques, such as the drift of the piezoelectric elements, the unequal image contrast along the fast‐ and the slow‐scan axes, the physical contact between the tip of nondefinable geometry and the sample, and the feedback parameters. Recently, high‐speed AFM (HS‐AFM) has been introduced, which allows image acquisition about three orders of magnitude faster (500–100 ms frame rate) than conventional AFM (500 s to 100 s frame rate). HS‐AFM produces image sequences, large data sets, which report biological sample dynamics. To analyze these movies, we have developed a software package that (i) adjusts individual scan lines and images to a common contrast and z‐scale, (ii) filters specifically those scan lines where increased or insufficient force was applied, (iii) corrects for piezo‐scanner drift, (iv) defines particle localization and angular orientation, and (v) performs particle tracking to analyze the lateral and rotation displacement of single molecules. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.