1. A scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) system, comprising: an electron beam scanning system configured to generate a plurality of electron beam scans over substantially an entire sample, with each said scan varying in electron-illumination intensity over a course of the scan; a signal acquisition system for obtaining an image from the scans, the image representing only information from at least one of a select subplurality or linear combination of all pixels comprising the image, and producing a dataset therefrom; and a subsystem for mathematically analyzing the dataset to predict actual information that would have been produced by each pixel in a conventional STEM acquisition.