High Angle Dark Field Imaging, or Z contrast imaging, is an Imaging method. It takes advantage of the useful fact that if one uses the high angle scattering intensities and eliminates the elastic scattered (diffracted) beams from the image (by using a Howie type angular dark field detector), the remaining image will be characterized by, if the probe used is on the order of the atomic dimensions, intensity modulations that reveal atom positions and relative atomic number. In simple terms, the image will display Z-contrast at the atomic level and can differentiate columns of heavy atoms from columns of lighter ones.