Sample micro-CT data of wood accompanying the article "A New Dimension in Wood Anatomy Education: Exploring Softwood and Hardwood Structures in 3D"

Two exemplary micro-CT datasets of wood are provided that accompany the article "A new dimension in wood anatomy education: exploring softwood and hardwood structures in 3D" published by the European Journal of Wood and Wood Products (Koddenberg, 2025). The datasets represent the wood tissue of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), a softwood, and poplar (Populus sp.), a hardwood. The oringial scans were performed with the micro-CT system Nanotom s (phoenix|x-ray, GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies GmbH) at the department Wood Biology and Wood Products of the University of Göttingen, Germany. The data reconstruction was performed with the micro-CT’s reconstruction software (datos|x acquisition, GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies GmbH), while the image analysis was realized using the Avizo software (FEI, Thermo Fisher Scientific). The size of the scanned wood samples were approximately 2 × 2 × 10 mm³. The final dataset used here was cropped to a certain voulme of interest (VOI) with a size of approximately 500 × 500 × 500 voxels. The datasets of wood samples are provided as both (i) raw and (ii) binary dataset (both as 2D TIFF stack). The binary dataset includes micro-CT datasets that have been denoised using the non-local means filter and segmented using the 3D region-growing method in Avizo. While the binary datasets allow for rapid visualization of wood tissues in 3D, the raw datasets enable user-specific image analysis with Avizo or any other image-analysis software. For an overview of the 3D wood structure of the VOIs, snapshots are provided. Softwood of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) Anatomical features: Wood at the growth-ring boundary; earlywood; latewood; tracheids; wood rays; bordered pits; cross-field pits Voxel size: 0.9 µm VOI: 500 voxels × 500 voxels × 500 voxels (R, T, L) File sizes: 245 MB and 6 MB Diffuse-porous hardwood of poplar (Populus sp.) Anatomical features: Wood at the growth-ring boundary; earlywood; latewood; vessels; fibers; wood rays; simple vessel perforations; ray-vessel pits; intervessel pits Voxel size: 1 µm VOI: 500 voxels × 500 voxels × 500 voxels (R, T, L) File sizes: 243 MB and 9 MB When using the datasets (e.g., for the generations 2D or 3D visualiations or CAD files for 3D printing), please cite the proper Zenodo entry and the associated article: Koddenberg, Tim (2025): A new dimension in wood anatomy education: exploring softwood and hardwood structures in 3D. Eur. J. Wood Wood Prod. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00107-025-02329-6