Patent ID: 8331626

Claim:
A method for estimating a physical property of a porous material from a sample thereof, comprising: making a three dimensional tomographic image of the sample of the material; segmenting the image into pixels each representing pore space or rock grain; estimating at least one physical property from the segmented image; and at least one of storing and displaying the estimated physical property, wherein the tomographic image comprises a value of gray scale allocated to each of a plurality of pixels in the image, and wherein the segmenting comprises: (a) determining an initial gray scale threshold for each of pore space and rock grain; (b) allocating each pixel in the image to a pore space seed or a rock grain seed for each pixel meeting threshold criteria for each of the pore space and rock grain thresholds, respectively; (c) interrogating pixels adjacent to each pore space seed and rock grain seed; (d) allocating the interrogated adjacent pixels previously not allocated to a seed to the pore space seed or the rock grain seed based on threshold criteria; and (e) repeating (c) and (d) until substantially all pixels in the image are allocated to the rock grain or the pore space.