Tilting alignment for electron tomography based on local cross-correlation and adaptive searching

Understanding three-dimensional (3D) structure of components ranging from molecules to cells can help to understand the biological function of viruses. Accurate image alignment is needed for computing 3D reconstruction from transmission electron microscope tilt series. In this paper, an image alignment method for electron tomography is presented which is based on local cross-correlation and adaptive searching. Using several feature regions to compute cross-correlation instead of whole image can overcome the noise-sensitivity of the cross-correlation method. And the adaptive searching can improve the accuracy of alignment in effective time.