Grain size estimation in polycrystals: Solving the corpuscle problem using Maximum Likelihood Estimation

In materials science, the microstructures of are generally characterized by 2D observation (e.g. electron microscopy). For polycrystalline materials, such as crystalline rocks or ceramics, those observations can be used to measure grain size distribution. However, fact that sizes measured in planar cuts introduces a statistical bias, since real (3D) cannot directly measured. almost spherical grains, this bias computed thanks so-called Wicksell's equation. This paper proposes method, based on Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) for unfolding apparent The efficiency method is extensively investigated special case lognormal case, 10% uncertainty distribution parameters reached with only 580 empirical values.