Automatic acquisition of fiducial markers and alignment of images in tilt series for electron tomography. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Three-dimensional reconstruction of a section of biological tissue by electron tomography requires precise alignment of a series of two-dimensional images of the section made at numerous successive tilt angles. Gold beads on or in the section serve as fiducial markers. A scheme is described that automatically detects the position of these markers and indexes them from image to image. The resulting set of position vectors are arranged in a matrix representation of the tilt geometry and, by inversion, alignment information is obtained. The scheme is convenient, requires little operator time and provides an accuracy of < 2 pixels RMS. A tilt series of 60-70 images can be aligned in approximately 30 min on any modern desktop computer.

published proceedings

  • J Electron Microsc (Tokyo)

altmetric score

  • 3

author list (cited authors)

  • Ress, D., Harlow, M. L., Schwarz, M., Marshall, R. M., & McMahan, U. J.

citation count

  • 65

complete list of authors

  • Ress, D||Harlow, ML||Schwarz, M||Marshall, RM||McMahan, UJ

publication date

  • January 1999