Generative learning of morphological and contrast heterogeneities for self-supervised electron micrograph segmentation
摘要
Deep learning in electron microscopy (EM) data analysis is predominantly supervised, relying on manually labeled data. This dependence limits scalability and slows the development of high-throughput EM characterization of materials. While simulation-based approaches provide an alternative, they often struggle with morphological heterogeneity, contrast complexity, and experimental artifacts, reducing their real-world effectiveness. We introduce EMcopilot, a closed-loop generative learning framework that enables label-free EM segmentation. EMcopilot leverages the general vision model to extract morphological priors and employs a conditional generative adversarial network to generate contrast-aware images. An EM-specific domain adapter further enhances realism by modeling key microscope-specific perturbations. Benchmark results show that EMcopilot-trained models not only achieve segmentation accuracy comparable to human-annotated models but also outperform them in detecting nanoparticles in poor-contrast regions and spatially clustered configurations, overcoming inherent human biases in annotation. By illustrating how generative models distill and transform complex EM features into a robust training resource in a self-supervised manner, EMcopilot provides a scalable solution for automated microscopy analysis.