Robust Technique for Representative Volume Element Identification in Noisy Microtomography Images of Porous Materials Based on Pores Morphology and Their Spatial Distribution

TL;DR

This paper presents a robust method for identifying representative volume elements in noisy microtomography images of porous materials, enabling efficient analysis without relying on physical parameters like porosity.

Contribution

The proposed technique accurately finds representative volume elements in noisy, grayscale images without physical parameter considerations, improving efficiency and flexibility.

Findings

Effective identification of volume elements in noisy images

Method works with anisotropic samples without overestimation

Facilitates optimal filtering for denoising and analysis

Abstract

Microtomography is a powerful method of materials investigation. It enables to obtain physical properties of porous media non-destructively that is useful in studies. One of the application ways is a calculation of porosity, pore sizes, surface area, and other parameters of metal-ceramic (cermet) membranes which are widely spread in the filtration industry. The microtomography approach is efficient because all of those parameters are calculated simultaneously in contrast to the conventional techniques. Nevertheless, the calculations on Micro-CT reconstructed images appear to be time-consuming, consequently representative volume element should be chosen to speed them up. This research sheds light on representative elementary volume identification without consideration of any physical parameters such as porosity, etc. Thus, the volume element could be found even in noised and grayscale images. The proposed method is flexible and does not overestimate the volume size in the case of anisotropic samples. The obtained volume element could be used for computations of the domain's physical characteristics if the image is filtered and binarized, or for selections of optimal filtering parameters for denoising procedure.