EMX: The electron microscopy exchange format
EMX is a continued effort by several developers in the 3DEM community to establish standards for the interchange of information between software packages. The effort is detailed in the following publication: Marabini, R., et al. (2016). "The Electron Microscopy eXchange (EMX) initiative." J Struct Biol 194(2): 156-163.. Because this is an evolving standard, it is likely to experience significant changes
Current status
All EMX files have the extension: ".emx". The identities of the micrographs and particles are associated with their image file names. The current emphasis is on single particle analysis and limited to the following parameters:
- CTF: Defocus minimum and maximum, astigmatism angle and amplitude contrast.
- Microscope: Acceleration voltage and spherical aberration (Cs).
- Micrograph: Pixel size.
- Particle: Micrograph location, pixel size, box size, translation and orientation.
Selected parameters from the micrograph hierarchy can be exported to and imported from EMX files for interchange with other software packages.