Multi-Mineral Segmentation of SEM Images Using Deep Learning Techniques

Abstract

The approaches of building and methods of using the digital core are currently developing rapidly. The use of these methods makes it possible to obtain petrophysical information by non-destructive methods quickly. Digital rock physics includes two main stages: constructing models and modeling various physical processes on the obtained models. Our work proposes using deep learning methods for mineral and pore space segmentation instead of classical methods such as threshold image processing. Deep neural networks have long been able to show their advantages in many areas of computer vision. This paper proposes and tests methods that help identify different minerals in images from a scanning electron microscope. We used images of rocks of the Achimov formation, which are arkoses, as samples. We tested various deep neural networks such as LinkNet, U-Net, ResUNet, and pix2pix and identified those that performed best in segmentation.