Signature: System Overview

Signature is a particle data analysis system for macromolecule electron microscopy (EM). The major components of the system are a particle screening module and a particle analysis module. The graphic user interface of the program provides informative data display to facilitate and expedite data processing.
The particle screening module supports both automatic and manual operations. High-throughput selection can be achieved by automated screening, which applies a hierarchical template-matching algorithm to identify the molecules of interest from electron micrographs. The result is reproducible and is less susceptible to subjective bias. The algorithmic screening can operate either under an interactive (GUI) mode or under a stand-alone computing (COM) mode. The COM mode enables batch-processing that can greatly enhance productivity through scripting and distributed computing. Manual particle selection operates through the program graphic interface. Together with intuitive data display, the program combines computational accuracy with remarkable human ability for pattern recognition to facilitate quality control and decision making.

The data analysis module provides image processing functions that are frequently used in this field, such as band-pass filtering, intensity normalization and particle classification. Some newly developed analytical tools, including digital gel filtration, have also been incorporated into the system.

Signature aims to create a friendly and flexible computing environment for EM data processing, and therefore to allow the user to concentrate on other important aspects of an EM study - for instance, to prepare better specimen grids and to improve the resolution of a structure. To help further improve the system design, please send your constructive feedback to jzchen@brandeis.edu.