An Advanced Image Processing Technique for Backscatter-Electron Data by Scanning Electron Microscopy for Microscale Rock Exploration

Backscatter electron analysis from scanning electron microscopes(BSE-SEM)produces high-resolution image data of both rock samples and thin-sections,showing detailed structural and geochemical(mineralogical)information.This allows an in-depth exploration of the rock microstructures and the coupled chemical characteristics in the BSE-SEM image to be made using image processing techniques.Although image processing is a powerful tool for revealing the more subtle data“hidden”in a picture,it is not a commonly employed method in geoscientific microstructural analysis.Here,we briefly introduce the general principles of image processing,and further discuss its application in studying rock microstructures using BSE-SEM image data.