A new approach to the investigation of nanoparticles: Electron tomography with compressed sensing

► Electron tomography (ET) provides 3D analysis with nanometre resolution. ► Compressed sensing (CS) reduces the number of images needed for ET reconstruction. ► The essence and value of CS-ET are outlined and demonstrated with examples. ► CS-ET has the potential to enable study of beam sensitive materials. ► An appendix discusses the salient aspects of CS in tutorial fashion.