The estimation of porosity in Japan Trench plate boundary using low-resolution X-ray computed tomography (XCT) images and laboratory measurements

Abstract. X-ray computed tomography (XCT) is an advanced imaging technique that has been increasingly used in the past years because it can provide valuable information on internal structures of a rock sample in a non-invasive manner. The maximum resolution of lab-based XCT facilities is ~0.5 μm, which might be sufficient to capture macropores in some rocks (i.e., sandstone), but will result in underestimation of porosity in clay-rich sediments containing micro-and nano-scale pores. Furthermore, such high-resolution XCT facilities are quite expensive and not ubiquitous. In this study, we introduce a new methodology based on the K-means clustering algorithm to process of low-resolution XCT i…