Effect of X-Ray Computed Tomography Scanning Parameters on the Estimated Porosity of Foam Specimens

X-Ray Computed Tomography (CT) scanning is an effective method for estimating the porosity of various engineering materials and biomedical specimens such as tissue scaffolds and bones. However, the scanning and analysis parameters play a significant role in the accuracy of the porosity value determined from CT scan. This paper presents details of an investigation carried out to understand the effect of system parameters, namely the voxel size, X-ray focal spot size and segmentation threshold, on the estimated porosity by taking an example of safety-critical foam used for impact protection applications. Different voxel resolutions and focal spot sizes are selected in a total of 12 scanning tests and the effect of segmentation threshold is analyzed on each of these tests. The study indicates that the obtained porosity value is greatly influenced by the choice of voxel size at larger spot sizes and less influenced at smaller spot sizes. The threshold also has significant effect on the porosity value, especially at larger voxel sizes.