Volumetric Simulation of Nano-Fibres and 2D SEM and 3D XCT Imaging Processes

Abstract

Fibres are present in many biological tissues and their geometric properties can be a useful indication of their role. Hence, imaging of nano-fibre volumes is useful for a number of different biomedical applications. It is possible to image nano-fibres with a variety of imaging modalities such as 2D Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) or 3D X-ray Computed Tomography (XCT). The 3D XCT has some advantages over conventional SEM. The principal ability is to gain an understanding of the 3D structure of objects. However, XCT has limited resolution compared to SEM. This means SEM can be useful to provide more detailed specific estimates of the sizes of structures such as estimates of the diameters of fibres. Image processing of these images has resulted in the need for a gold standard to help demonstrate the correct functioning and validation of designed algorithms. Simulation can play an important part in the validation of algorithms. However, previous works have performed limited simulations. Some methods simulate fibres as straight vectors. The approach taken here is more realistic, allowing for curving, overlapping and other more realistic generation of fibre volumes with the use of splines. The limited resolution in the imaging processes are also considered here, another important factor. Simulation results are compared with real world imaging data from both SEM and XCT. The generated results appear to show similar properties and could potentially be used as gold standards for the validation of image processing algorithms.