Digital Rock Samples Porosity Analysis by OTSU Thresholding Technique Using MATLAB

Porosity plays an essential role in petroleum engineering. It controls fluid storage in aquifers, connectivity of the pore structure control fluid flow through reservoir formations. To quantify the relationships between porosity, storage, transport and rock properties, however, the pore structure must be measured and quantitatively described. Porosity estimation of digital image utilizing image processing essential for the reservoir rock analysis since the sample 2D porosity briefly described. The regular procedure utilizes the binarization process, which uses the pixel value threshold to convert the color and grayscale images to binary images. The idea is to accommodate the blue regions entirely with pores and transform it to white in resulting binary image. This paper presents the possibilities of using image processing for determining digital 2D rock samples porosity in carbonate reservoir rocks. MATLAB code created which automatically segment and determine the digital rock porosity, based on the OTSU's thresholding algorithm. In this work, twenty-two samples of 2D thin section petrographic image reservoir rocks of one Iraqi oil field are studied. The examples of thin section images are processed and digitized, utilizing MATLAB programming. In the present study, we have focused on determining of micro and macroporosity of the digital image. Also, some pore void characteristics, such as area and perimeter, were calculated. Digital 2D image analysis results are compared to laboratory core investigation results to determine the strength and restrictions of the digital image interpretation techniques. Thin microscopic image porosity determined using OTSU technique showed a moderate match with core porosity.