In parallel to the work by Witham and Sánchez, a proof of concept machine named the scanning helium microscope (SHeM) was being developed in Cambridge in collaboration with Dastoor's group from the University of Newcastle. The approach that was adopted was to simplify previous attempts that involved an atom mirror by using a pinhole, but to still use a conventional helium source to produce a high quality beam. Other differences from the Witham and Sánchez design include using a larger sample to pinhole distance, so that a larger variety of samples can be used and to use a smaller collection solid angle, so that it may be possible to observe more subtle contrast. These changes also reduced the total flux in the detector meaning that higher efficiency detectors are required (which in itself is an active area of research.