Segmentation and morphological analysis of amyloid fibrils from cryo-EM image data

Abstract Fast assessment of the composition of amyloid fibril samples from cryo-EM data poses a serious challenge to existing image analysis tools. We develop a method for automated segmentation of single fibrils requiring only little user input during the training process. This is achieved by combi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Matthias Weber, Matthias Neumann, Matthias Schmidt, Peter Benedikt Pfeiffer, Akanksha Bansal, Marcus Fändrich, Volker Schmidt
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SpringerOpen 2023-02-01
Series:Journal of Mathematics in Industry
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1186/s13362-023-00131-8
Description
Summary:Abstract Fast assessment of the composition of amyloid fibril samples from cryo-EM data poses a serious challenge to existing image analysis tools. We develop a method for automated segmentation of single fibrils requiring only little user input during the training process. This is achieved by combining a binary segmentation based on a convolutional neural network with preprocessing steps to allow for easy manual generation of training data. Subsequent skeletonization turns the binary segmentation into a single-object segmentation. Then, we compute properties of shape and texture of each segmented fibril, including an estimation of the fibril width. We discuss the composition of the sample based on the distributions of these computed properties and outline how a classification of fibril morphologies might be performed using these properties.
ISSN:2190-5983