DeepFocus: fast focus and astigmatism correction for electron microscopy.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38296974.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-45042-3 and PMC identifier 10830472.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
High-throughput 2D and 3D scanning electron microscopy, which relies on automation and dependable control algorithms, requires high image quality with minimal human intervention. Classical focus and astigmatism correction algorithms attempt to explicitly model image formation and subsequently aberration correction. Such models often require parameter adjustments by experts when deployed to new microscopes, challenging samples, or imaging conditions to prevent unstable convergence, making them hard to use in practice or unreliable. Here, we introduce DeepFocus, a purely data-driven method for aberration correction in scanning electron microscopy. DeepFocus works under very low signal-to-noise ratio conditions, reduces processing times by more than an order of magnitude compared to the state-of-the-art method, rapidly converges within a large aberration range, and is easily recalibrated to different microscopes or challenging samples.