LAUSR

Source rocks are composed of inorganic minerals, clay particles, and organic matter that are compacted to create a composite with texture and pore sizes that vary at the nanoand micro-scales [1-2]. These rocks exhibit chemical variations due to the dominant framework phases ( e.g. calcite, dolomite, or quartz) and the clay minerals (e.g. illite, smectite, or kaolinite), while exhibiting variations in the organic components (kerogen, bitumen, and/or pyrobitumen) where the relative amount and molecular composition varies with thermal maturity [2-4]. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) is commonly used for source rock characterization to quantify the fraction of various components, porosity, and pore size distribution, which are used to evaluate reservoir quality during hydrocarbon exploration. This variation in structural and chemical heterogeneity as well as imaging artifacts such as charging, surface contamination, and surface damage from sample preparation, create images with a broad multi-modal intensity histogram that is challenging to accurately segment [5].