- 10.1002/2017JB014408
Abstract — We develop a new Monte Carlo-based inversion method for estimating electron density and effective atomic number from 3D dual-energy computed tomography (CT) core scans. The method accounts for uncertainties in X-ray attenuation coefficients resulting from the polychromatic nature of X-ray beam sources of medical and industrial scanners, in addition to delivering uncertainty estimates of inversion products. Estimation of electron density and effective atomic number from CT core scans enables direct deterministic or statistical correlations with salient rock properties for improved petrophysical evaluation; this condition is specifically important in media such as vuggy carbonates where CT resolution better captures core heterogeneity that dominates fluid flow properties. Verification tests of the inversion method performed on a set of highly heterogeneous carbonate cores yield very good agreement with in-situ borehole measurements of density and photoelectric factor. Key-words: Computed tomography, dual energy, vugs, vuggy carbonates, core density, mineralogy distribution, Monte Carlo method