Images and Microstructures

Abstract

Throughout this book we will be looking at images as we try to extract and analyze in a quantitative way the information contained in them. Most of the images will show microstructures of various types of rocks and the major part of the book is dedicated to methods by which the geometry—the size, shape, number, spatial distribution, etc.—of crystals, grains or surfaces can be quantified. The choice of methods for analysis will depend on the type of microstructure present in an image and on the nature of the image itself. It is therefore useful to ask ourselves at the very beginning what we mean by ‘images’ and what we think ‘microstructures’ are.