SHREC Cryo-ET 2019 Dataset: Classification in Cryo-Electron Tomograms

Different imaging techniques allow us to study the organization of life at different scales. Cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) has the ability to three-dimensionally visualize the cellular architecture as well as the structural details of macro-molecular assemblies under near-native conditions. Due to beam sensitivity of biological samples, an inidividual tomogram has a maximal resolution of 5 nanometers. By averaging volumes, each depicting copies of the same type of a molecule, resolutions beyond 4 Å have been achieved. Key in this process is the ability to localize and classify the components of interest, which is challenging due to the low signal-to-noise ratio. Innovation in computational methods remains key to mine biological information from the tomograms. To promote such innovation, we organize this SHREC track and provide a simulated dataset with the goal of establishing a benchmark in localization and classification of biological particles in cryo-electron tomograms. The publicly available dataset contains ten reconstructed tomograms obtained from a simulated cell-like volume. Each volume contains twelve different types of proteins, varying in size and structure. Participants had access to 9 out of 10 of the cell-like ground-truth volumes for learning-based methods, and had to predict protein class and location in the test tomogram. You can find more details in <a href="https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/3dor20191061">the related publication</a> and on the <a href="https://www.shrec.net/cryo-et/2019/">contest webpage</a>.