Energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) are commonly used techniques to both qualitatively and quantitatively probe the composition of samples in the TEM. A primary challenge in the quantitative accuracy of both techniques is the phenomenon of channelling. Put simply, in a crystalline solid, the probability of interaction between an electron and ion in the lattice depends strongly on the momentum (direction and velocity) of the electron. When probing a sample under diffraction conditions near a zone axis, as is often the case in EDS and EELS applications, channelling can have a large impact on the effective interaction of the incident electrons with specific ions in the crystal structure. In practice, this can lead to erroneous measurements of composition that depend strongly on the orientation and thickness of the sample and the accelerating voltage. Since PED entails an integration over incident directions of the electron probe, and generally does not include beams parallel to the zone axis, the detrimental channeling effects outlined above can be minimized, yielding far more accurate composition measurements in both techniques.