FPicker: Topology-Guided Evolution for Filament Tracing in Low-SNR Microscopy

Automating filament tracing in Cryo-Electron Microscopy (Cryo-EM) is essential for 3D helical reconstruction but challenged by intersecting topologies and extremely low Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNR = σs2/σn2 < 0.1 or -10 dB). Existing paradigms fail: pixel-wise segmenters suffer from severe topological fracturing, box-based detectors face ghost center drift, sequential trackers derail due to error accumulation, and traditional active contours collapse under artificial closed-curve constraints. To resolve these bottlenecks, we present FPicker, the first topology-guided framework reconciling these incompatibilities. It unifies perception via a center-endpoint representation and an open-curve evolution module to explicitly model non-cyclic connectivity. On simulated benchmarks, FPicker outperforms top baselines by over 40% relative gain in mean spatio-angular precision (mSAP) and reduces topological gap rates by over 60% under extreme noise (-20 dB). By learning intrinsic physical geometry rather than local texture, FPicker demonstrates strong potential as a resilient geometric backbone. Its zero-shot performance on the real-world EMPIAR dataset exhibits robust topological resistance, achieving a state-of-the-art 82.9% mSAP upon fine-tuning. Our results also suggest modeling physical priors is a highly robust path toward bridging the sim-to-real gap in signal-starved scientific imaging. The code is publicly available at: https://github.com/tomzhaosky/FPicker.