Automated correction for the movement of suspended particulate in microtomographic data

•Image cross correlation for analysis of time-resolved XCT data of particulate suspensions.•Accounting for microstructural changes as a function of time, in tomographic data.•Automated identification of a cluster of particles during sedimentation and reaction.•Fresh cementitious pastes are used as an example. This study reports the development and application of a digital image cross correlation based approach to resolve contiguous microstructural volumes of interest in X-ray microtomography data, collected in fluid suspensions that undergo significant microstructural changes over time, using fresh cementitious pastes as an example. This computational method provides a high precision both for cementitious pastes that sediment only slightly (i.e. are cohesive), and for those that undergo significant sedimentation and/or settlement within the first few minutes of reaction. The normalised cross correlation algorithm presented here enables the observation of an identical volume of interest, i.e., one which contains a contiguous particle group, from the first seconds of observation onwards with excellent accuracy. This method enables segmentation of the same cluster of particles to be almost entirely automated and resolved in large sets of sequentially collected data, therefore enabling particle reaction to be observed directly while removing effects due to sedimentation.