In all scattering experiments some measure is need of the strength of the scattering interaction. The scattering cross section, which has dimensions of area, is a quantity that can be defined for any scattering interactions, irrespective of the nature of the scatterer, or the particle or radiation being scattered. To define a scattering cross section, refer to the geometry of Figure 1. If I0 is the incident number of particles, Is the number of particles scattered through an angle θ with an energy loss ΔE, N is the number of scatterers/ unit volume and t is the thickness of the specimen (or length of the scattering region) then where σ(θ ,ΔE) is the scattering cross section. The product N t represents the number of scatterers per unit area as seen by the incident beam

In electron microscopy all scattering arises from the Coulomb interaction between the incident electron and the electrons or nuclei or the atoms in the specimen.