Digital reconstruction and analysis
Reconstruction of 2D radiographs was performed using ZEISS XM Reconstructor software to produce TXM files. These 3D files were loaded into Thermo Fisher (MA, USA) Avizo® Fire 2022 for processing and analysis . Files were cropped to the appropriate size before applying ‘non-local means’ and ‘unsharp masking’ commands to reduce and remove noise from each volume. The ‘Interactive Thresholding’ command was used to segment material and void phases for analysis before applying further analysis commands, for example ‘Volume Fraction’ to measure porosity .
‘Chamfer Distance Map’ and ‘Separate Objects’ were used to produce a Pore Network Map that enabled identification of pore sizes and connectivity . The XLAB plugin was used for ‘Permeability Simulation Experiment’ to visualize and characterize flow through each digital geometry . 3D TIFF files were exported to the MATLAB plugin TauFactor to evaluate tortuosity factor .