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Poster

CryoGEM: Physics-Informed Generative Cryo-Electron Microscopy

Jiakai Zhang · Qihe Chen · Yan Zeng · Wenyuan Gao · Xuming He · Zhijie Liu · Jingyi Yu

[ ] [ Project Page ]
Fri 13 Dec 4:30 p.m. PST — 7:30 p.m. PST

Abstract:

In the past decade, deep conditional generative models have revolutionized the generation of realistic images, extending their application from entertainment to scientific domains. Single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is crucial in resolving near-atomic resolution 3D structures of proteins, such as the SARS-COV-2 spike protein. To achieve high-resolution reconstruction, neural methods for particle picking and pose estimation have been adopted. However, their performance is still limited as they lack high-quality annotated datasets. To address this, we introduce physics-informed generative cryo-electron microscopy (CryoGEM), which for the first time integrates physical-based cryo-EM simulation with a generative unpaired noise translation to generate physically correct synthetic cryo-EM datasets with realistic noises. Initially, CryoGEM simulates the cryo-EM imaging process based on a virtual specimen. To generate realistic noises, we leverage an unpaired noise translation via contrastive learning with a novel mask-guided sampling scheme. Extensive experiments show that CryoGEM is capable of generating realistic cryo-EM images. The generated dataset can further enhance particle picking and pose estimation models, eventually improving the reconstruction resolution. We will release our code and annotated synthetic datasets.

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