mtffilter(1) General Commands Manual mtffilter(1) NAME mtffilter - filter by inverse of MTF and general Fourier filter SYNOPSIS mtffilter [options] input_file [output_file] DESCRIPTION Mtffilter can restore contrast in CCD camera images by multiplying them by the inverse of the camera's modulation transfer function (MTF). It can also apply a low pass filter to reduce high frequency noise, as well as a high pass filter to eliminate low frequencies. Any combina- tion of these filters may be applied. In fact, the program provides all of the options that Enhance does for specifying a general Fourier filter. Because images are automatically padded to dimensions suitable for taking an FFT, there are no restrictions on image size, unlike with Enhance. This program can filter either real-space images in 2D planes, real-space images in 3D or 3D Fourier transforms in 3D. The filter functions produced by these options can be visual- ized with the program Filterplot; see that man page for a full description of their effects. The program can also apply a third kind of filter that has been found useful for reducing fringe effects in EM images taken with a phase plate. This filter is specified by a cutoff radius, and exponential power, and an amplification factor, the amount by which it amplifies low frequencies relative to high ones. It goes from 1 at zero fre- quency to a floor of 1/ amplificationFactor at high frequencies and falls 1/e of the way to the floor at the cutoff radius. A higher power increases the sharpness of the falloff. This filter is referred to here as a low-frequency amplifier filter. It is selected by entering the -amplifier option plus either the cutoff radius (with -cutoff) or parameters of the phase plate imaging (with -phase). It cannot be used together with the low-pass and high-pass filter options. The program can also apply a filter in one dimension, in the X-direc- tion only, and specifically can apply an R-weighted 1-D filter such as is used in back-projection. This R-weighted filter cannot be used together with inverse MTF filtering. Simply multiplying by the inverse of an MTF would amplify noise too much, so the inverse MTF filter is shaped by three parameters. The first and most important is the maximum inverse value, which limits how high the inverse can become. The other two parameters are a cutoff frequency at which to start a Gaussian rolloff of the inverse back to 1.0, and the sigma value for this Gaussian rolloff. The default values for these parameters (listed below) are based on limited experimenta- tion and are fairly conservative. All of these parameters together will keep the inverse filter from amplifying high frequency noise. The low pass filter's role is to filter out those high frequencies. If both filters are used, there are potentially 4 different frequency ranges: 1) From 0 to the frequency at which the inverse reaches its maximum, the filter is actually the inverse of the MTF, 2) From there to the cutoff frequency for the inverse rolloff, the filter equals the maximum inverse, 3) Beyond this cutoff frequency, the filter progressively decays back to 1.0, 4) Beyond the cutoff radius for the low-pass filter, the filter is multiplied by another Gaussian and decays to 0. The MTF curve to be applied should be read in from a file containing values for spatial frequency (in reciprocal pixels) and for the MTF, one pair per line. The program has one built-in curve in which the MTF crosses 0.5 at 0.117/pixel. This curve can be adjusted by scaling its axis, which will make it approximately correct for other situations. To apply only low-pass and high-pass filters, omit the -mtf and -stock options; to apply only an inverse filter, omit the -lowpass and other options for general filtering. Similarly, to apply only a low-fre- quency amplifier filter, omit the -mtf, -stock, and other general fil- ter options. If the input file is a real image, then without the "-3d" option the program will take the FFT of each section, apply the filter, take the inverse FFT, and write out the filtered section. With the "-3d" option, it will load the whole file into memory, tapered and padded just as in Taperoutvol, take the 3D FFT, filter, inverse FFT, and write the volume. If the input file is a Fourier transform, it must be a 3D FFT (obtained from "clip fft -3d" or "fftrans -3d"). In this case the program will apply the filter to the transforms in three dimensions and write out a filtered FFT. The program allocates memory dynamically, so it is capable of filtering a rather large volume in 3D, as long as the padded volume is smaller than 2 gigavoxels. However, it will require 4 bytes of memory per voxel; e.g., 4 GB for a 1 gigavoxel volume. In addition, the time per voxel increases as the log of the volume size, so it can be quicker to chop a volume into pieces, filter them, and reassemble the result. To filter a large image file in 3D this way, simply make a file filter- big.com with one line: $mtffilter -3d <filtering options> INPUTFILE OUTPUTFILE where you insert your filtering options, but INPUTFILE and OUTPUTFILE are exactly as shown, and not the names of your actual input and output files. The run: chunksetup -p 0 filterbig.com input_file output_file where "-p 0" eliminates padding because Mtffilter will take care of padding, and this time you do put your actual input and output file names. See Chunksetup for details. You can execute the resulting command files with parallel processing (via Processchunks or Etomo) or sequentially with: subm filterbig-all OPTIONS Mtffilter uses the PIP package for input (see the manual page for pip). The following options can be specified either as command line arguments (with the -) or one per line in a command file or parameter file (without the -). Options can be abbreviated to unique letters; the currently valid abbreviations for short names are shown in paren- theses. -input (-inp) OR -InputFile File name Input file with images to be filtered -output (-o) OR -OutputFile File name Output file for filtered images. If this file is omitted, the program will write filtered images back to the input file. -zrange (-z) OR -StartingAndEndingZ Two integers First and last Z values in the file to filter. Values are num- bered from 1 and the default is to do all sections. -mode (-mo) OR -ModeToOutput Integer The storage mode of the output file; 0 for byte, 1 for 16-bit signed integer, 6 for 16-bit unsigned integer, or 2 for 32-bit floating point. The default is the mode of the input file. This entry is allowed only when writing to a new output file and when the input is not an FFT. -3dfilter (-3) OR -FilterIn3D Filter data in 3D instead of in 2D. The entire volume will be filtered, so it must fit into memory and -zrange cannot be entered. If the volume will not fit in memory, use "clip fft -3d" to get an FFT, run Mtffilter on the 3D FFT, then inverse transform with "clip fft -3d -m mode", where mode is the desired output mode, typically the same as the input. -1dfilter (-1) OR -OneDimensionalFilter Filter data in 1D (in X direction) instead of in 2D -lowpass (-l) OR -LowPassRadiusSigma Two floats Cutoff radius and sigma for a low pass filter that imposes a high-frequency Gaussian roll-off to 0.0. The default is no high-frequency filtering. These entries correspond to the Radius2 and Sigma2 entries to Enhance and other programs; see the Enhance or Filterplot man pages for a full explanation of the effects of changing the sign of the Sigma2 or the Sigma1 and Radius1 parameters entered with the next two options. -highpass (-hi) OR -HighPassSigma Floating point Sigma for a high pass filter based on an inverted Gaussian that starts at 0.0 at zero frequency and decays up to 1 with the given sigma. The default is no high-frequency filtering. This entry corresponds to the Sigma1 entry to Enhance and other programs. A negative Sigma1 can be used to get a band-pass fil- ter based on the second derivative of a Gaussian. -radius1 (-ra) OR -FilterRadius1 Floating point Cutoff radius for a high-pass filter that is 1.0 at this radius and falls off as a Gaussian to the left of this point with sigma equal to the Sigma2 value entered with -lowpass. This entry corresponds to the Radius1 entry to Enhance and other pro- grams. A negative Radius1 will make the inverted Gaussian invoked by -highpass be zero out to |Radius1|. -mtf (-mt) OR -MtfFile File name File with MTF curve. The format of the file is a series of lines, with a spatial frequency in reciprocal pixels and an MTF value on each line. -stock (-s) OR -StockCurve Integer The number of the stock (built-in) MTF curve to use. Since there is only one curve, only an entry of 1 is allowed. -maxinv (-ma) OR -MaximumInverse Floating point Maximum value for inverse of MTF. The inverse should always be limited to reduce noise. -invrolloff (-inv) OR -InverseRolloffRadiusSigma Two floats Radius and sigma for gaussian roll-off of inverse to 1.0 (default 0.12 and 0.05) -xscale (-x) OR -XScaleFactor Floating point Scaling factor for X-axis of MTF curve. Scaling the X axis is probably an adequate way to adapt a curve from one camera or binning to another. -denscale (-d) OR -DensityScaleFactor Floating point Scaling factor for image intensities after filtering. -rweight (-rw) OR -RWeightedFilter Apply an R-weighted filter in the X-dimension, as in back-pro- jection. This option implies -1dfilter. It cannot be used along with an inverse MTF filter. The filter will be scaled to be 1.0 at the cutoff radius specified with the -lowpass option, if any, or at a frequency of 0.5. This will likely result in a smaller range for the output values, which could lose intensity resolution by making integer values occupy too few gray levels. To overcome this problem, use the -denscale option to scale the data up, or change the output mode to floating point with "-mode 2". -fake (-f) OR -FakeSIRTiterations List of integer ranges Apply a filter to a standard R-weighted back-projection that is equivalent to doing a given number of iterations of SIRT. See the Tilt man page section on SIRT for a description of the filter and the literature reference. If one number is entered, the output file will have the supplied name. If a list of num- bers (which can include ranges) is entered, a file is produced for each entered number, named by appending the number to the entered output name. This filter can be combined with others (sensibly or not). In particular, it could be combined with -rweight and and applied in 1-D to tilt series. It cannot be applied in 3-D, and when applied in 2-D, it is appropriate only when applied to a reconstruction in its original orientation as a stack of X/Z slices. In the latter case, the output here will match the output of Tilt very closely when there is no X-axis tilt or local alignments, and it will diverge increasingly with increasing X-axis tilt. Whether these differences are signifi- cant depends on your application. In any case, applying multi- ple filters would be an efficient way to find the desired number of iterations. Iteration numbers must be under 1000. -amplifier (-a) OR -AmplifierFactorAndPower Two floats Amplification factor and exponent for low-frequency amplifier filter. Either -cutoff or -phase must also be entered. -cutoff (-c) OR -CutoffForAmplifier Floating point Cutoff radius in reciprocal pixels for amplifier filter. This option cannot be entered together with -phase. -phase (-ph) OR -PhasePlateParameters Three floats Parameters of phase plate imaging, used to compute a nominal cutoff radius for the low-frequency amplifier filter. Enter the phase plate diameter in nanometers, the voltage in kilovolts, and the objective lens focal length in millimeters. -pixel (-pi) OR -PixelSize Floating point Pixel size in nanometers. A pixel size is needed to compute the cutoff radius for the amplifier filter from the phase plate parameters. This entry is needed only if the pixel size in the image file header is incorrect. -noise (-n) OR -NoisePadding Use tapered noise based on nearby pixels along the edge of an image to pad an image before filtering. The default is to pad with a simple taper that makes streaks outside the edge of the image. For low-dose images, low-pass filtering can spread these streaks into the image area after cropping and produce artifacts along the edge. This option will avoid this effect, but is probably not suitable for higher-contrast images. -param (-pa) OR -ParameterFile Parameter file Read parameter entries from file -help (-he) OR -usage Print help output -StandardInput Read parameter entries from standard input. HISTORY Added to package, 3/30/04 Added ability to operate on 3D FFT, 6/19/04 Added ability to take filter real volume in 3D, 5/20/08 BUGS Email bug reports to mast at colorado dot edu. IMOD 4.9.10 mtffilter(1)