Effective pattern intensity artifacts treatment for electron diffractive imaging

We present a method to treat spurious intensities in electron diffraction experiments. Coherent electron diffraction imaging requires proper data reduction before the application of phase retrieval algorithms. The presence of spurious intensities in the electron diffraction patterns makes the data reduction complicated and time consuming and jeopardizes the application of mathematical constraints to maximize the information that can be extracted from the experimental data. Here we show how the experimental diffraction patterns can be treated to remove the unwanted artifacts without corrupting the genuine intensities scattered by the specimen. The resulting diffraction patterns are suitable for the application of further processes and constraints aimed at deriving fundamental structural information by applying phase retrieval algorithms or other approaches capable of deriving quantitative atomic resolution information about the specimen structure.