Bsoft: image processing and molecular modeling for electron microscopy

Abstract

Bsoft is a software package written for image processing of electron micrographs, interpretation of reconstructions, molecular modeling, and general image processing. The code is modularized to allow for rapid testing and deployment of new processing algorithms, while also providing sufficient infrastructure to deal with many file formats and parametric data. The design is deliberately open to allow interchange of information with other image and molecular processing software through a standard parameter file (currently a text-based encoding of parameters in the STAR format) and its support of multiple image and molecular formats. It also allows shell scripting of processes and allows subtasks to be distributed across multiple computers for concurrent processing. Bsoft has undergone many modifications and advancements since its initial release [Heymann, J.B., 2001. Bsoft: image and molecular processing in electron microscopy. J. Struct. Biol. 133, 156-169]. Much of the emphasis is on single particle analysis and tomography, and sufficient functionality is available in the package to support most needed operations for these techniques. The key graphical user interface is the program bshow, which displays an image and is used for many interactive purposes such as fitting the contrast transfer function or picking particles. Bsoft also offers various tools to manipulate atomic structures and to refine the fit of a known molecular structure to a density in a reconstruction.