TY - JOUR A1 - Tsamos, Athanasios A1 - Evsevleev, Sergei A1 - Fioresi, R. A1 - Faglioni, F. A1 - Bruno, Giovanni T1 - Synthetic Data Generation for Automatic Segmentation of X-ray Computed Tomography Reconstructions of Complex Microstructures N2 - The greatest challenge when using deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) for automatic segmentation of microstructural X-ray computed tomography (XCT) data is the acquisition of sufficient and relevant data to train the working network. Traditionally, these have been attained by manually annotating a few slices for 2D DCNNs. However, complex multiphase microstructures would presumably be better segmented with 3D networks. However, manual segmentation labeling for 3D problems is prohibitive. In this work, we introduce a method for generating synthetic XCT data for a challenging six-phase Al–Si alloy composite reinforced with ceramic fibers and particles. Moreover, we propose certain data augmentations (brightness, contrast, noise, and blur), a special in-house designed deep convolutional neural network (Triple UNet), and a multi-view forwarding strategy to promote generalized learning from synthetic data and therefore achieve successful segmentations. We obtain an overall Dice score of 0.77. Lastly, we prove the detrimental effects of artifacts in the XCT data on achieving accurate segmentations when synthetic data are employed for training the DCNNs. The methods presented in this work are applicable to other materials and imaging techniques as well. Successful segmentation coupled with neural networks trained with synthetic data will accelerate scientific output. KW - Automatic segmentation KW - 3D deep convolutional neural network (3D DCNN) KW - Dice score KW - Metal matrix composite (MMC) KW - Modified U-Net architectures KW - Multi-phase materials PY - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-571243 VL - 9 IS - 2 SP - 1 EP - 23 PB - MDPI AN - OPUS4-57124 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tsamos, Athanasios A1 - Evsevleev, Sergei A1 - Fioresi, R. A1 - Faglioni, F. A1 - Bruno, Giovanni T1 - A novel iterative algorithm to improve segmentations with deep convolutional neural networks trained with synthetic X-ray computed tomography data (i.S.Sy.Da.T.A) N2 - We propose a novel iterative segmentation algorithm (i.S.Sy.Da.T.A: Iterative Segmentation Synthetic Data Training Algorithm) employing Deep Convolutional Neural Networks and synthetic training data for X-ray tomographic reconstructions of complex microstructures. In our method, we reinforce the synthetic training data with experimental XCT datasets that were automatically segmented in the previous iteration. This strategy produces better segmentations in successive iterations. We test our algorithm with experimental XCT re constructions of a 6-phase Al-Si Matrix Composite reinforced with ceramic fibers and particles. We perform the analysis in 3D with a special network architecture that demonstrates good generalization with synthetic training data. We show that our iterative algorithm returns better segmentations compared to the standard single training approach. More specifically, phases possessing similar attenuation coefficients can be better segmented: for Al2O3 fibers, SiC particles, and Intermetallics, we see an increase of the Dice score with respect to the classic approach: from 0.49 to 0.54, from 0.66 to 0.72, and from 0.55 to 0.66 respectively. Furthermore, the overall Dice score increases from 0.77 to 0.79. The methods presented in this work are also applicable to other materials and imaging techniques. KW - Metal matrix composites (MMC) KW - Multi-phase materials KW - 3D imaging KW - Dice score KW - Automatic segmentation KW - Deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) KW - Modified U-net architectures PY - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.commatsci.2023.112112 SN - 0927-0256 VL - 223 SP - 1 EP - 8 PB - Elsevier B.V. AN - OPUS4-57482 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -