Data Intensive Imaging for 3D Atom Probe

Atom Probe Tomography (APT) combines atomic imaging with a time-of-flight mass spectrometer to provide direct space three-dimensional, atomic-scale resolution images of materials with the chemical identities of all the detected atoms. Quantitative analysis of APT data through advanced data mining methods enhances the chemical characterization of alloy systems and accounts for the statistical uncertainty associated with missing data and the physics of preferential evaporation. Most techniques currently used to extract precipitate topology and interface information from APT data are efficient; however, they are based on homogenization of the rich point cloud data which inherently loses some information. Furthermore, these methods require a specified, usually heuristic, concentration-level to draw iso-contours in order to extract characteristics of the precipitate topology. These twin issues of homogenization and heuristics are compelling rationale for the development of a robust, scalable, heuristic-free, graph-based framework [1].