For many years the concept of quantitative diffraction contrast experiments might have consisted of the determination of dislocation Burgers vectors using a g.b = 0 criterion from several different 2-beam images. Since the advent of the personal computer revolution, the available computing power for performing image-processing and image-simulation calculations is enormous and ubiquitous. Several programs now exist to perform simulations of diffraction contrast images using various approximations. The most common approximations are the use of only 2-beams or a single systematic row to calculate the image contrast, or calculating the image using a column approximation. The increasing amount of literature showing comparisons of experimental and simulated images shows that it is possible to obtain very close agreement between the two images; although the choice of parameters used, and the assumptions made, in performing the calculation must be properly dealt with. The simulation of the images of defects in materials has, in many cases, therefore become a tractable problem.
