PickYOLO: Fast deep learning particle detector for annotation of cryo electron tomograms

PickYOLO is a super-fast, universal particle detector, based on the deep-learning real-time object recognition system YOLO (You Only Look Once). After training with the centre coordinates of a few hundred representative particles, the network automatically detects additional particles with high yield and reliability at a rate of 0.24-3.75 seconds per tomogram. PickYOLO demonstrated the ability to automatically detect a sufficient number of particles comparable to those manually selected by experienced microscopists. This makes PickYOLO a valuable tool to substantially reduce the time and manual effort needed to analyse cryoET data for STA, greatly aiding in high-resolution cryoET structure determination.