The 'slicing' is a key new feature of this method. By using...

The 'slicing' is a key new feature of this method. By using a fast shutter on the ion detector, we can wait until the middle of the ion cloud reaches the detector before we pulse the shutter on and off again. This way, we are looking only at the molecules that originally were moving parallel to the plane of the detector. That makes the images sharper and more accurate.