Status and prospects of frozen soil studies using CT technology

This paper introduces the characteristics of Computed Tomography (CT) technology and reviews its history, current situation, representative achievements, and use of using CT technology on frozen soil study, including auxiliary equipment specially designed for frozen soil studies. CT numbers are used to analyze frozen soil internal structure change, defining and exploring damage evolution, and use of CT images on observing soil mesostructure. Finally, this paper presents existing problems confronted by using CT in frozen soil studies, possible solutions and challenges, among which, we introduce high quality CT image processing for frozen soils, and relations between CT number change and each component change on frozen soil samples within the region of interest. It is shown that present CT technology is one of the most ideal and effective technology to study frozen soil mesostructure using non-destructive testing. CT technology will play a key role in the study and development in the field of frozen soil by means of auxiliary equipment and the digital imaging processing.