(TKP2021-NVA-19) Támogató: Innovációs és Technológiai Minisztérium
Object detection is an image analysis task with a wide range of applications, which
is difficult to accomplish with traditional programming. Recent breakthroughs in machine
learning have made significant progress in this area. However, these algorithms are
generally compatible with traditional pixelated images and cannot be directly applied
for pointillist datasets generated by single molecule localization microscopy (SMLM)
methods. Here, we have improved the averaging method developed for the analysis of
SMLM images of sarcomere structures based on a machine learning object detection algorithm.
The ordered structure of sarcomeres allows us to determine the location of the proteins
more accurately by superimposing SMLM images of identically assembled proteins. However,
the area segmentation process required for averaging can be extremely time-consuming
and tedious. In this work, we have automated this process. The developed algorithm
not only finds the regions of interest, but also classifies the localizations and
identifies the true positive ones. For training, we used simulations to generate large
amounts of labelled data. After tuning the neural network’s internal parameters, it
could find the localizations associated with the structures we were looking for with
high accuracy. We validated our results by comparing them with previous manual evaluations.
It has also been proven that the simulations can generate data of sufficient quality
for training. Our method is suitable for the identification of other types of structures
in SMLM data.