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First application of scintillator-based photon-counting computed tomography to rock samples; preliminary results and prospects

Ayumi Ishiguro, Makoto Arimoto, Daichi Sato, Takahiro Tomoda, Keita Itano, Akihiro Tamura, Hironori Sugiyama, Takeshi Kawae, Mayuko Fukuyama, Jun Kataoka, Shinsuke Terazawa, Satoshi Shiota and Tomoaki Morishita
First application of scintillator-based photon-counting computed tomography to rock samples; preliminary results and prospects
American Mineralogist (September 2024) 109 (9): 1591-1597

Abstract

Knowledge of the three-dimensional distribution of minerals in a rock sample is of fundamental importance to deciphering a sample's properties and history. Attenuation-contrast X-ray computed tomography (X-ray CT) is widely used in the geosciences to determine the three-dimensional distributions of minerals or pores, or both. Photon counting CT (PC-CT) uses a novel energy-resolved X-ray detector that allows X-rays with a continuous energy spectrum to be detected separately within arbitrary energy ranges. Here we report the first results of applying laboratory-build PC-CT combined with multi-pixel photon counter (MPPC) to common minerals such as quartz and calcite. In the low-energy range, PC-CT produced higher contrast images than single-energy X-ray CT. Minerals were successfully identified from the relationships between the mean CT values for each energy window and the mean difference between pairs of energy windows. These results suggest that PC-CT can produce high-contrast images of minerals and may be able to distinguish mineral phases with different attenuation curves, even when their CT values are similar. We obtained CT images of minerals in a natural sedimentary rock sample, composed mainly of quartz and carbonate. Although the spatial resolution of the detector in this study was insufficient for the sample, the main carbonate veins were clearly visible as high carbonate-content areas in the PC-CT images. Given some prior knowledge of mineral phases from other methods, it may be possible to use PC-CT imaging to obtain further information about their chemical compositions.


ISSN: 0003-004X
EISSN: 1945-3027
Coden: AMMIAY
Serial Title: American Mineralogist
Serial Volume: 109
Serial Issue: 9
Title: First application of scintillator-based photon-counting computed tomography to rock samples; preliminary results and prospects
Affiliation: Kanazawa University, Institute of Science and Engineering, Kanazawa, Japan
Pages: 1591-1597
Published: 202409
Text Language: English
Publisher: Mineralogical Society of America, Washington, DC, United States
References: 32
Accession Number: 2024-076466
Categories: General mineralogy
Document Type: Serial
Bibliographic Level: Analytic
Illustration Description: illus. incl. 1 table
Secondary Affiliation: Waseda University, JPN, JapanAkita University, JPN, JapanProterial, JPN, JapanJapan Agency for Marine Earth Science and Technology, JPN, Japan
Country of Publication: United States
Secondary Affiliation: GeoRef, Copyright 2024, American Geosciences Institute. Abstract, copyright, Mineralogical Society of America. Reference includes data from GeoScienceWorld, Alexandria, VA, United States
Update Code: 2024
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