Rotationally Invariant Image Representation for Viewing Direction Classification in Cryo-EM

We introduce a new rotationally invariant viewing angle classification method for identifying, among a large number of Cryo-EM projection images, similar views without prior knowledge of the molecule. Our rotationally invariant features are based on the bispectrum. Each image is denoised and compressed using steerable principal component analysis (PCA) such that rotating an image is equivalent to phase shifting the expansion coefficients. Thus we are able to extend the theory of bispectrum of 1D periodic signals to 2D images. The randomized PCA algorithm is then used to efficiently reduce the dimensionality of the bispectrum coefficients, enabling fast computation of the similarity between any pair of images. The nearest neighbors provide an initial classification of similar viewing angles. In this way, rotational alignment is only performed for images with their nearest neighbors. The initial nearest neighbor classification and alignment are further improved by a new classification method called vector diffusion maps. Our pipeline for viewing angle classification and alignment is experimentally shown to be faster and more accurate than reference-free alignment with rotationally invariant K-means clustering, MSA/MRA 2D classification, and their modern approximations

From Euclidean to Minkowski space with the Cauchy-Riemann equations

We present an elementary method to obtain Green's functions in non-perturbative quantum field theory in Minkowski space from calculated Green's functions in Euclidean space. Since in non-perturbative field theory the analytical structure of amplitudes is many times unknown, especially in the presence of confined fields, dispersive representations suffer from systematic uncertainties. Therefore we suggest to use the Cauchy-Riemann equations, that perform the analytical continuation without assuming global information on the function in the entire complex plane, only in the region through which the equations are solved. We use as example the quark propagator in Landau gauge Quantum Chromodynamics, that is known from lattice and Dyson-Schwinger studies in Euclidean space. The drawback of the method is the instability of the Cauchy-Riemann equations to high-frequency noise, that makes difficult to achieve good accuracy. We also point out a few curiosities related to the Wick rotation.Comment: 12 pages in EPJ double-column format, 16 figures. This version: added paragraph, two reference