A Zernike-moment-based non-local denoising filter for cryo-EM images

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) plays an important role in determining the structure of proteins, viruses, and even the whole cell. It can capture dynamic structural changes of large protein complexes, which other methods such as X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance analysis find difficult. The signal-to-noise ratio of cryo-EM images is low and the contrast is very weak, and therefore, the images are very noisy and require filtering. In this paper, a filtering method based on non-local means and Zernike moments is proposed. The method takes into account the rotational symmetry of some biological molecules to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio of cryo-EM images. The method may be useful in cryo-EM image processing such as the automatic selection of particles, orientation determination, and the building of initial models.