To get the most out of high resolution X-ray tomography: A review of the post-reconstruction analysis

X-ray microscopy has been well-recognized as one of the most important techniques for research in a wide range of scientific disciplines including materials science, geoscience, and bio-medical science. Advances in X-ray sources, optics, detectors, and imaging methodologies have made significant improvements to non-destructive reconstructions of the three dimensional (3D) structure of specimens over a wide range of length scales with different contrast mechanisms. A strength of 3D imaging is a “seeing is believing” way of reporting and analyzing data to better understand the structure/function characteristics of a sample. In addition to the excellent visualization capability, X-ray computed tomography has a lot more to offer. In this article, we review some of the experimental and analytical methods that enrich and extract scientifically relevant information from tomographic data. Several scientific cases are discussed along with how they enhance the tomographic dataset.