The image contrast of dislocation loops computed in the past has made use of the displacement fields which do not take into account the presence of stress- free foil surfaces. The free surface modifies the elastic fields around a dislocation loop and hence can influence the image contrast observed in the electron microscope. The effect can be significant particularly when the loops lie close to one of the foil surfaces. In general, the elasticity problem of dislocation loops that takes the free surface into account is difficult to handle mathematically. In the present paper, the method of Bastecka1 was extended to obtain explicitly the analytical expressions for the displacement fields around a pure edge circular dislocation loop lying parallel to the foil surface. In this method, the stress fields of an image dislocation loop and another axially symmetric stress system were added in order to eliminate the normal as well as shear stresses at the surface.
