TiltRec: an ultra-fast and open-source toolkit for cryo-electron tomographic reconstruction

Motivation: Cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) has revolutionized our ability to observe structures from the subcellular to the atomic level in their native states. Achieving high-resolution reconstruction involves collecting tilt series at different angles and subsequently backprojecting them into 3D space or iteratively reconstructing them to build a 3D volume of the specimen. However, the intricate computational demands of tomographic reconstruction pose significant challenges, requiring extensive calculation times that hinder efficiency, especially with large and complex datasets. Results: We present TiltRec, an open-source toolkit that leverages the parallel capabilities of Central Processing Units and Graphics Processing Units to enhance tomographic reconstruction. TiltRec implements six classical tomographic reconstruction algorithms, utilizing optimized parallel computation strategies and advanced memory management techniques. Performance evaluations across multiple datasets of varying sizes demonstrate that TiltRec significantly improves efficiency, reducing computational times while maintaining reconstruction resolution. Summary: TiltRec effectively addresses the computational challenges associated with cryo-ET reconstruction by fully exploiting parallel acceleration. As an open-source tool, TiltRec not only facilitates extensive applications by the research community but also supports further algorithm modifications and extensions, enabling the continued development of novel algorithms.