Investigating Root Growth in Granular Media with X-ray Computed Tomography

Granular and particulate systems play a vital role in various natural processes, industrial applications, and medicine. Previous research has utilized X-ray computed tomography to analyze soil packing around root growth (Bauer, 2015), however, identifying how root growth changes across different plant species remains to be accomplished. This project focuses on the impact of Arabidopsis root growth as a well investigated model plant on the local packing of granular media. Using daily scans taken over a two week period, the Arabidopsis samples are examined during its primary root growth. We employ X-ray computed tomography to collect scan samples and utilize MATLAB for image analysis. Using image analysis algorithms such as binarization and morphological erosion, we extract grayscale information from voxels to identify particle centroid locations and subsequently segment and isolate the root volume. This data provides valuable insights into the particle system, enabling the tracking of particles and quantifying changes in local packing density with set-voronoi tessellation. This project’s findings serve as a foundation for future research analyzing how root growth impacts the local properties of granular systems, shedding light onto the interactions between root during growth and the granular media it is embedded in.