Validation of x-ray microfocus computed tomography as an imaging tool for porous structures
- Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 44-bus 2450, B-3001 Leuven (Belgium)
- Division of Biomechanics and Engineering Design, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 300C, B-3001 Leuven (Belgium)
X-ray microfocus computed tomography (micro-CT) is recently put forward to qualitatively and quantitatively characterize the internal structure of porous materials. However, it is known that artifacts such as the partial volume effect are inherently present in micro-CT images, thus resulting in a visualization error with respect to reality. This study proposes a validation protocol that in the future can be used to quantify this error for porous structures in general by matching micro-CT tomograms to microscopic sections. One of the innovations of the protocol is the opportunity to reconstruct an interpolated micro-CT image under the same angle as the physical cutting angle of the microscopic sections. Also, a novel thresholding method is developed based on matching micro-CT and microscopic images. In this study, titanium porous structures are assessed as proof of principle. It is concluded for these structures that micro-CT visualizes 89% of the total amount of voxels (solid and pore) correctly. However, 8% represents an overestimation of the real structure and 3% are real structural features not visualized by micro-CT. When exclusively focusing on the solid fraction in both the micro-CT and microscopic images, only an overestimation of about 5% is found.
- OSTI ID:
- 21024737
- Journal Information:
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 79, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2838584; (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0034-6748
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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