Credit: Derek Mendez
AI tools developed at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource's Structural Molecular Biology Resource analyze diffraction patterns to distinguish split protein crystals (left) from useable crystals (right). For each image, the inset (bottom right) shows zoomed-in views of the boxed region (upper left). In the split crystal diffraction pattern, the spots are slightly disordered and occasionally overlap with each other; examples of particularly troublesome diffraction are highlighted in green circles. AI tools provide an elegant computational solution for distinguishing these kinds of images and are much faster than previous methods.