Wittge and Heupel reported in 2010 that the microscopical examination of thin sectioned and polished geological samples with a polarized light microscope is a well-known technique. Nowadays, because of increasing demand from the oil and gas industry, higher throughput in processing and digitalizing sample must be achieved. In recent years, fully automated and boxed systems, such as ZEISS Axio Scan.Z1, have been developed. The development of these new microscope types has made it possible to achieve a much higher throughput in digitalizing and analyzing thin sections. In this note, the ZEISS Axio Scan.Z1 is used to show how easily petrographic thin sections can now be imaged, especially with regard to high throughput.
The authors concluded that in the oil and gas industry, automated microscope systems such as ZEISS Axio Scan.Z1 provide high magnifications (from 25x up to 400x) and high resolution (NA up to 0.9) to analyze and archive thin sections from drilling cores. The images of the thin sections can be recorded with different contrasting techniques (brightfield, polarization and fluorescence) in a row, with superb resolution and contrast, to obtain the greatest amount of information from the sample in a very short time. Results of up to 50 petrographic slides can be achieved in row in order to increase the productivity. All results are reproducible over time and across systems with the advanced calibration of the automated microscopic system.
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