# A Gaussian Parameterization for Direct Atomic Structure Identification in Electron Tomography

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.15034 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15034/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Nerfstudio: A Modular Framework for Neural Radiance Field Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04264/) (2023)
- [gsplat: An Open-Source Library for Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06765/) (2024)
- [R2-Gaussian: Rectifying Radiative Gaussian Splatting for Tomographic Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20693/) (2024)
- [Radiative Gaussian Splatting for Efficient X-ray Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04116/) (2024)
- [GaSpCT: Gaussian Splatting for Novel CT Projection View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03126/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Atomic electron tomography (AET) enables the determination of 3D atomic structures by acquiring a sequence of 2D tomographic projection measurements of a particle and then computationally solving for its underlying 3D representation. Classical tomography algorithms solve for an intermediate volumetric representation that is post-processed into the atomic structure of interest. In this paper, we reformulate the tomographic inverse problem to solve directly for the locations and properties of individual atoms. We parameterize an atomic structure as a collection of Gaussians, whose positions and properties are learnable. This representation imparts a strong physical prior on the learned structure, which we show yields improved robustness to real-world imaging artifacts. Simulated experiments and a proof-of-concept result on experimentally-acquired data confirm our method's potential for practical applications in materials characterization and analysis with Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). Our code is available at https://github.com/nalinimsingh/gaussian-atoms.