Optimal-transport-based metric for SMLM

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Flat Metric, based on optimal transport, as a rigorous way to evaluate SMLM reconstruction methods, effectively capturing localization and detection performance using ground-truth data.

Contribution

It presents the mathematical foundations of the Flat Metric and demonstrates its effectiveness through synthetic data and SMLM Challenge results.

Findings

Flat Metric provides a solid mathematical basis for SMLM evaluation.

It effectively assesses both localization and detection performance.

Validated on synthetic data and SMLM Challenge datasets.

Abstract

We propose the use of Flat Metric to assess the performance of reconstruction methods for single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) in scenarios where the ground-truth is available. Flat Metric is intimately related to the concept of optimal transport between measures of different mass, providing solid mathematical foundations for SMLM evaluation and integrating both localization and detection performance. In this paper, we provide the foundations of Flat Metric and validate this measure by applying it to controlled synthetic examples and to data from the SMLM 2016 Challenge.