Enhancement of Cryo-EM maps by a multiscale tubular filter

Abstract

We present an approach to enhance cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) postprocessed maps based on a multiscale tubular filter. The method determines a tubularness measure locally by the analysis of the eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix. This information is used to enhance elongated local structures and to attenuate blob-like and plate-like structures. The approach, thus, introduces a priori information in the reconstructions to improve their interpretability and analysis at high-resolution. The proposed method has been tested with simulated and real cryo-EM maps including recent reconstructions of the SARS-CoV-2. Our results show that our methods can improve obtained reconstructions.