Automated Particle Size Analysis of Supported Nanoparticle TEM Images Using a Pre-Trained SAM Model

This study addresses the challenges associated with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image analysis of supported nanoparticles, including low signal-to-noise ratio, poor contrast, and interference from complex substrate backgrounds. This study proposes an automated segmentation and particle size analysis method based on a large-scale deep learning model, namely segment anything model (SAM). Using Ru/TiO2 and related materials as representative systems, the pretrained SAM is employed for zero-shot segmentation of nanoparticles, which is further integrated with a custom image processing pipeline, including optical character recognition (OCR) module, morphological optimization, and connected component analysis to achieve high-precision particle size quantification. Experimental results demonstrate that the method retains robust performance under challenging imaging conditions, with a size estimation error between 3% and 5% and a per-image processing time under 1 min, significantly outperforming traditional manual annotation and threshold-based segmentation approaches. This framework provides an efficient and reliable analytical tool for morphological characterization and structure–performance correlation studies in supported nanocatalysts.