Real-time 3D analysis during electron tomography using tomviz

TL;DR

This paper presents a real-time 3D analysis method integrated into tomviz, enabling rapid visualization and interpretation of electron tomography data within minutes, significantly reducing the time from data collection to analysis.

Contribution

The authors develop and demonstrate a real-time 3D electron tomography workflow within an open-source platform, allowing immediate structural interpretation during data acquisition.

Findings

Volumetric interpretation begins in less than 10 minutes.

High-quality tomograms are produced within 30 minutes.

The method is applicable to complex biological and material specimens.

Abstract

The demand for high-throughput electron tomography is rapidly increasing in biological and material sciences. However, this 3D imaging technique is computationally bottlenecked by alignment and reconstruction which runs from hours to days. We demonstrate real-time tomography with dynamic 3D tomographic visualization to enable rapid interpretation of specimen structure immediately as data is collected on an electron microscope. Using geometrically complex chiral nanoparticles, we show volumetric interpretation can begin in less than 10 minutes and a high quality tomogram is available within 30 minutes. Real time tomography is integrated into tomviz, an open source and cross platform 3D analysis tool that contains intuitive graphical user interfaces (GUI) to enable any scientist to characterize biological and material structure in 3D.