Influence of Standard Image Processing of 3D X-ray Microscopy on Morphology, Topology and Effective Properties

Estimating porous media properties is a vital component of geosciences and the physics of porous media. Until now, imaging techniques have focused on methodologies to match image-derived flows or geomechanical parameters with experimentally identified values. Less emphasis has been placed on the compromise between image processing techniques and the consequences on topological and morphological characteristics and on computed properties such as permeability. The effects of some of the most popular image processing techniques (filtering and segmentation) available in open source on 3D X-ray Microscopy (micro-XRM) images are qualitatively and quantitatively discussed. We observe the impacts of various filters such as erosion-dilation and compare the efficiency of Otsu's method of thresholding and the machine-learning-based software Ilastik for segmentation.