Efficient parallel implementation of iterative reconstruction algorithms for electron tomography

Electron tomography (ET) combines electron microscopy and the principles of tomographic imaging in order to reconstruct the threedimensional structure of complex biological specimens at molecular resolution. Weighted back-projection (WBP) has long been the method of choice since the reconstructions are very fast. It is well known that iterative methods produce better images, but at a very costly time penalty. In this work, it is shown that efficient parallel implementations of iterative methods, based primarily on data decomposition, can speed up such methods to an extent that they become viable alternatives to WBP. Precomputation of the coefficient matrix has also turned out to be important to substantially improve the performance regardless of the number of processors used. Matrix precomputation has made it possible to speed up the block-iterative component averaging (BICAV) algorithm, which has been studied before in the context of computerized tomography (CT) and ET, by a factor o...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: JPDC
• Authors: José-Jesús Fernández, Dan Gordon, Rachel Gordon
• Keywords: Complex Biological Specimens, Costly Time Penalty, Iterative Methods, JPDC 2008