Micro Rock Fracture Image Acquisition and Processing

In the study, the first hard problem is to obtain rock fracture images of a good quality, since rock surface is very rough, and is compose of complicated and multiple fractures. We used both UV (Ultraviolet) light illumination and visible optical illumination to acquire rock fracture images. The samples are resin injected, in which way; opened fractures can be seen clearly by means of UV light illumination, and the rock surface information can be obtained by using visible optical illumination. In the study period, we used microscope to obtain the images by the two illuminations, from the same samples; we found that UV illumination image gives the clear information of fracture opening or closing, and the visible optical illumination gives the information of the rock surface (e.g. filling materials inside of fractures). This paper presents and discusses: (1) Rock fracture image acquisition by using UV light illumination and visible optical illumination; (2) fracture detection: (3) Two kinds of images comparison and information complementary; (4) Conclusions.