4:35 PM - 4:50 PM
[MIS03-06] Corascope: Software assisted XRF scan merging
Due to the physical constraints of X-ray Florescence (XRF) scanners, all but the shortest sedimentary cores are typically scanned in a piecewise fashion. Pieces are either extracted in whole (ex: Russian peat corer) or are sectioned after extraction (ex: piston and gravity cores). The XRF core scanner will the generate an optical/RGB line-scan image, an X-ray radiograph and a table of downcore variations in the elemental composition. The subsequent processes of digitally joining the individual section scans and reconstructing the original core as it was found in the ground is typically done in an ad-hoc manner with little visual feedback. Manual manipulation of elemental-composition tables while maintaining proper alignment with the optical scans is error prone and slow and as a result the image data is typically discarded at this point or only used as a rough reference. This means a potentially valuable data source is typically lost. Corascope is a first-pass data reconstruction tool for the Itrax XRF scanner that aims to streamline data merging before doing any analysis. It does this by giving immediate visual feedback while cutting and merging sections while automatically preserving optical and elemental data alignment. It further provides a statistically-guided set of tools for adjusting overlapping core sections. These allow users to go from several overlapped cores to one merged virtual core. This virtual core then provides a reconstruction of the sedimentary layers as they would appear had the cores been extracted in one continuous piece. In line with the goal of being a first-pass tool, Corascope leaves all data values unperturbed and merged core data is output in the same format as generated by the Itrax XRF scanner. This ensures that preexisting analysis software and laboratory procedures can continue to work on preprocessed data just as before.