3D Image Processing of Nanoscale Fibres in XCT Images

Nanoscale X-ray Computer Tomography (XCT) enables unique insights into material properties. However the data is often large in volume, often consisting of a billion or more voxels with each voxel covering a 12 bit range of grey scales in 3D.
This project aimed to develop novel automatic techniques for the characterisation of the physical properties such as the geometric distributions and physical dimensions of fibres in XCT images. Fibres are an important component in many materials including biological based such as elastin and collagen and man made. Man made nano based fibres can be synthesised using techniques such as electrospinning. The 3D image processing techniques developed in this project were applied to XCT images for the characterisation of synthetic electrospun nanofibres.