Frontend
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React 19
TypeScript, Material UI, Zustand state
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Socket.IO
Live job progress streaming
About
Precision processing, apex performance.
CryoApex is open-source cryo-EM processing software built by structural biologists and software engineers who run cryo-EM workflows in their own research. The goal is a production-grade platform that scales from a desktop workstation to a distributed compute cluster — reproducible, extensible, and free from vendor lock-in.
open source · apache 2.0 cloud native plugin platform production ready
Vision
Decoupled geographically. Integrated operationally.
We want cryo-EM data collection and analysis decoupled geographically while remaining integrated operationally. CryoApex lets researchers reach world-class microscopes and computational resources without owning the hardware, while maintaining a single interface that hides the distributed-computing complexity.
Plugins are first-class citizens. Drop in a new algorithm, declare its inputs and outputs as Pydantic schemas, and the UI renders the form, dispatches the job, and surfaces the result alongside everything else — no per-plugin frontend work required. The same contract that drives the UI also drives the pipeline.
The stack
Containerized end-to-end.
CryoApex ships as a set of Docker images and one start script. The pieces that matter to most users:
Backend
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FastAPI
Python, SQLAlchemy ORM
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cryoapex-sdk
Pydantic schemas → auto-generated UI forms
Data plane
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MySQL 8
Sessions, images, jobs, results
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RabbitMQ
Plugin task queues
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NATS
Live event streaming
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GPFS root
MRC / TIFF / JPEG image files on disk
Delivery
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Docker
Single start.sh brings the full stack up
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Apache 2.0
Open source, free for any use
Get started
Ready to explore the platform?
The full architecture lives in the docs — installation, configuration, plugin authoring, and the API reference.