DefectTrack: a deep learning-based multi-object tracking algorithm for quantitative defect analysis of in-situ TEM videos in real-time

Rajat Sainju; Wei-Ying Chen; Samuel Schaefer; Qian Yang; Caiwen Ding; Meimei Li; Yuanyuan Zhu

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-19697-1

DefectTrack: a deep learning-based multi-object tracking algorithm for quantitative defect analysis of in-situ TEM videos in real-time

Sci Rep. 2022 Sep 20;12(1):15705. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-19697-1.

Authors

Rajat Sainju¹, Wei-Ying Chen², Samuel Schaefer¹, Qian Yang³, Caiwen Ding³, Meimei Li², Yuanyuan Zhu⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, 06269, USA.
² Nuclear Science and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, 60439, USA.
³ Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, 06269, USA.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, 06269, USA. yuanyuan.2.zhu@uconn.edu.

Abstract

In-situ irradiation transmission electron microscopy (TEM) offers unique insights into the millisecond-timescale post-cascade process, such as the lifetime and thermal stability of defect clusters, vital to the mechanistic understanding of irradiation damage in nuclear materials. Converting in-situ irradiation TEM video data into meaningful information on defect cluster dynamic properties (e.g., lifetime) has become the major technical bottleneck. Here, we present a solution called the DefectTrack, the first dedicated deep learning-based one-shot multi-object tracking (MOT) model capable of tracking cascade-induced defect clusters in in-situ TEM videos in real-time. DefectTrack has achieved a Multi-Object Tracking Accuracy (MOTA) of 66.43% and a Mostly Tracked (MT) of 67.81% on the test set, which are comparable to state-of-the-art MOT algorithms. We discuss the MOT framework, model selection, training, and evaluation strategies for in-situ TEM applications. Further, we compare the DefectTrack with four human experts in quantifying defect cluster lifetime distributions using statistical tests and discuss the relationship between the material science domain metrics and MOT metrics. Our statistical evaluations on the defect lifetime distribution suggest that the DefectTrack outperforms human experts in accuracy and speed.