We have recently established the existence of two structural states of the Z band lattice in cross section in cardiac as well as in skeletal muscle. The two structural states are related to the contractile state of the muscle. In skeletal muscle at rest, the Z band is in the small square (ss) lattice form, but tetanized muscle exhibits the basket weave (bw) form. In contrast, unstimu- lated cardiac muscle exhibits the bw form, but cardiac muscles exposed to EGTA show the ss form.We have used two-dimensional computer enhancement techniques on digitized electron micrographs to compare each lattice form as it appears in both cardiac and skeletal muscle. Both real space averaging and fourier filtering methods were used. Enhanced images were displayed as grey-scale projections, as contour maps, and in false color.There is only a slight difference between the lattices produced by the two different enhancement techniques. Thus the information presented in these images is not likely to be an artifact of the enhancement algorithm.
