A preparatory technique for examination of imperfect fungi by scanning electron microscopy.

Thin 12 mm diameter coverslips, coated with nutrient agar, were inoculated with a fungus, incubated, and sequentially examined with the light microscope and then the scanning electron microscope (SEM), thus providing the valuable capability of correlation of results obtained from these two microscopic analyses. A sandwich of two coverslips was prepared for light-microscopic observations, and then separated and the agar-coated coverslip on which the fungus had grown was passed through fixative solutions, critical point dried, metal-coated and examined in the SEM. The technique was designed primarily for studies of conidiogenesis in rapidly growing human pathogenic imperfect fungi.