Abstract
The main advantage of X-ray microcomputed tomography (µCT) as a non-destructive imaging tool lies in its ability to analyze the three-dimensional (3D) interior of a sample, therefore eliminating the stereological error exhibited in conventional two-dimensional (2D) image analysis. Coupled with the correct data analysis methods, µCT allows extraction of textural and mineralogical information from ore samples. This study provides a comprehensive overview on the available and potentially useful data analysis methods for processing 3D datasets acquired with laboratory µCT systems. Our study indicates that there is a rapid development of new techniques and algorithms capable of processing µCT datasets, but application of such techniques is often sample-specific. Several methods that have been successfully implemented for other similar materials (soils, aggregates, rocks) were also found to have the potential to be applied in mineral characterization. The main challenge in establishing a µCT system as a mineral characterization tool lies in the computational expenses of processing the large 3D dataset. Additionally, since most of the µCT dataset is based on the attenuation of the minerals, the presence of minerals with similar attenuations limits the capability of µCT in mineral segmentation. Further development on the data processing workflow is needed to accelerate the breakthrough of µCT as an analytical tool in mineral characterization.
Highlights
Following the widespread development of X-ray microcomputed tomography in medical applications and in diverse industrial applications, potential applications of μCT have been reviewed within the geosciences [1,2], especially for mineral characterization [3,4]
A similar method could potentially be applied in classifying textures based on spatial relationship between mineral phases in the sample, which is more relevant in terms of mineral characterization
The Gray level co-occurrence matrices (GLCM) technique has recently been applied to 3D μCT drill core images [24], where it was shown that there exists correlations between various textures and their respective GLCM statistics
Summary
Following the widespread development of X-ray microcomputed tomography (μCT) in medical applications and in diverse industrial applications, potential applications of μCT have been reviewed within the geosciences [1,2], especially for mineral characterization [3,4]. Mode this review focuses mainly on absorption-contrast review is as to this further explore potential datainanalysis methods that canAsbethe applied in mineral tomography, is the conventional mode laboratory objective of this characterization, μCTexplore applications in similar materials, such as different of rocks, sands, review is toother further potential data analysis methods that can betypes applied in mineral characterization, other μCT in similar such as different of to rocks, sands, powders, and aggregates, are applications considered. These 2D slices are volume elements (voxels) so that the slices could be stacked to recreate the 3D volume of the specimen To other reviews [1,3,33]
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