Microtomography has created new avenues for particulate-materials characterization, both from research and analytic perspectives. Whereas traditional analytic techniques require particles in a material to be dispersed,

micro-CT imaging can be applied to particulate materials without this step. New computational algorithms are then used to accurately extract the particle-by-particle structure in the material.

This approach allows for a number of new twists on particle analysis. For instance, a specific fraction of a particle size distribution can be isolated computationally and characterized. Also, information that is typically lost when particles are dispersed (particle locations, orientations, packing structure, contacts, etc.) can be quantified.