Tomography in Soil Science: From the First Experiments to Modern Methods (A Review)

The article provides an overview of the use of computed tomography in the study of soils from the first works to the present time. The development of computed tomography in the field of hardware and methods for processing tomographic data—from the first attempts to analyze soil structure using tomographic sections of low quality to modern methods of segmentation and analysis of volumetric structures using specialized software, correlation functions and neural networks—is discussed. The purpose of the article is to show the possibilities of methods for processing tomographic data in relation to studies of soil structure and to analyze possible trends of their further development. The article presents examples from the world experience of using computed tomography for a broad variety of soils, shows various methods of data segmentation that have been used from the first studies to the recent ones. The specific terminology coined in the course of the evolution of the method and various morphometric indicators for 2D and 3D images are presented, and a forecast of the prospects for the method in the near future is given.