TomoJ: tomography software for three-dimensional reconstruction in transmission electron microscopy

Background: Transmission electron tomography is an increasingly common three-dimensional electron microscopy approach that can provide new insights into the structure of subcellular components. Transmission electron tomography fills the gap between high resolution structural methods (X-ray diffraction or nuclear magnetic resonance) and optical microscopy. We developed new software for transmission electron tomography, TomoJ. TomoJ is a plug-in for the now standard image analysis and processing software for optical microscopy, ImageJ. Results: TomoJ provides a user-friendly interface for alignment, reconstruction, and combination of multiple tomographic volumes and includes the most recent algorithms for volume reconstructions used in three-dimensional electron microscopy ( the algebraic reconstruction technique and simultaneous iterative reconstruction technique) as well as the commonly used approach of weighted back-projection. Conclusion: The software presented in this work is specifically designed for electron tomography. It has been written in Java as a plug-in for ImageJ and is distributed as freeware.