Automated processing of series of micro-CT scans

For some applications of high-resolution X-ray Tomography (micro-CT) scanning, a large set of similar samples is to be analyzed in order to obtain statistically significant results. The complete process, including the micro-CT scan itself, the reconstruction and the analysis is almost identical for every sample. However, in a typical workflow every step is manually performed for every individual sample. This could be optimised by automation of this process, which results in less human intervention and thus a smaller cost and a lower risk to human error. We developed a reliable method to semi-automatically scan several stacked samples and automatically reconstruct the resulting series of data sets. The reconstruction step includes the manual reconstruction of one data set in order to optimize the reconstruction parameters, which can then be used for the rest of the batch. In future work, the automatic handling of the next step in the micro-CT workflow, 3D analysis, will also be improved.