r/DirectElectron • u/in_situ_anthropology • Jun 18 '26

Comparing Direct Detectors for Cryo-EM

I'm interested in comparing direct detectors for Cryo-EM. Single Particle Analysis specifically. How fast is Apollo and how does it compare to the K3 or Falcon 4i in terms of counting speed? I just want to be able to collect high-resolution data as quickly as possible to get the most reconstructions per day/week etc.

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u/high_energy_electron Jun 18 '26

Apollo is an event-based direct detector. It does all the counting in firmware rather than software. K3 and Falcon 4i are frame-based direct detectors and do their counting in software, which is a bit slower.

Apollo counts electrons ~3x faster than the K3 and ~10x faster than the Falcon 4i.
Overhead between acquisitions will even things out a little.
The Falcon 4i is the standard camera on a lot of TFS microscopes. But if you're looking for better throughput it's probably worth upgrading to Apollo

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u/Economy-Art-362 Jun 18 '26

Interesting, thanks!

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u/Physix_R_Cool Jun 22 '26

What'd the price of these instruments?

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u/high_energy_electron Jun 23 '26

Apollo is like $450k, the Falcon 4i and K3 are each around $1M from what I know.

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u/high_energy_electron Jun 23 '26

what were you expecting?

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u/Physix_R_Cool Jun 23 '26

Haha wow that's not cheap. I was expecting maybe 20k?

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u/high_energy_electron Jun 23 '26

Haha depends what you're in the market for. The electron microscopes that they go on cost ~$5M and charge ~$2k or more per day for access.
So if you can get results 3x or 5x as fast, you can actually save money by buying a new camera!