title: A framework to refine particle clusters produced by EMAN.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  EMAN is one of the most popular software packages for single particle reconstruction. But the particle clusters produced during its model refining stage are of low qualities. We attempt to refine the particle clusters by more accurately determining orientations of particles, and thereby achieving higher resolutions of consequent 3D structures.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A particle reclustering framework (PRF) is introduced, which consists of three components. Each of them is responsible for one of the basic tasks of PRF: normalization, threshold determination and reclustering. Our implementation is also described and proved to meet the constraints proposed by PRF. Experiments revealed that our implementation improved resolutions of consequent structures for most cases, but only a little extra execution time was incurred. Therefore, it is practical to incorporate PRF in EMAN to improve qualities of generated 3D structures.
  
  
  METHODS
  Implementation of our algorithm is available upon request from the authors.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. fanliya@ict.ac.cn
authors.forename: Liya
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.forename: Fa
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Gongming
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Zhiyong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D011487:Protein Conformation; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins