2012Yang ISAC

Citation

Yang, Z.; Fang, J.; Chittuluru, J.; Asturias, F. J. & Penczek, P. A. Iterative stable alignment and clustering of 2D transmission electron microscope images. Structure, 2012, 20, 237-247

Abstract

Identification of homogeneous subsets of images in a macromolecular electron microscopy (EM) image data set is a critical step in single-particle analysis. The task is handled by iterative algorithms, whose performance is compromised by the compounded limitations of image alignment and K-means clustering. Here we describe an approach, iterative stable alignment and clustering (ISAC) that, relying on a new clustering method and on the concepts of stability and reproducibility, can extract validated, homogeneous subsets of images. ISAC requires only a small number of simple parameters and, with minimal human intervention, can eliminate bias from two-dimensional image clustering and maximize the quality of group averages that can be used for ab initio three-dimensional structural determination and analysis of macromolecular conformational variability. Repeated testing of the stability and reproducibility of a solution within ISAC eliminates heterogeneous or incorrect classes and introduces critical validation to the process of EM image clustering.

Keywords

Clustering, 2D classification

Links

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22325773