Nat. Methods 6, 279–281 (2009); published online 1 March 2009; corrected after print 3 September 2009.

In the version of this paper originally published, references to previous work on pulse mode SICM should have been included (Mann, S.A. et al. J. Neurosci. Methods 116, 113–117, (2002) and Happel, P. et al. J. Microsc. 212, 144–151 (2003)). These references were removed during shortening of the paper for publication and have been added back to the PDF and HTML versions of this article. The pulse mode technique reported in these previous papers has conceptual similarity to our hopping mode SICM, in that distance feedback control is not continuous; thus, it also solves the problem of probe-sample collision for large cellular structures. However, the pulse mode technique is considerably slower owing to a different feedback mechanism and does not perform at nanoscale resolution.