New Characterization Measures of Pore Shape and Connectivity Applied to Coatings used for Controlled Drug Release

Pore geometry characterization-methods are important tools for understanding how pore structure influences properties such as transport through a porous material. Bottlenecks can have large influence on and related properties. However, existing methods only catch certain types of bottleneck effects caused by variations in size. We here introduce new measure, geodesic channel strength, which captures different type effect many paths coinciding the same pore. further develop variants size measures propose way visualizing 3-D characterization results using layered images. The together with were used to characterize visualize FIB-SEM images three leached ethyl-cellulose/hydroxypropyl-cellulose films. All films shown be anisotropic, strongest anisotropy was found film lowest porosity. This had very tortuous strong channel-bottlenecks, while other two relatively straight well-connected networks. strength give visual quantitative insights about connectivity, provided useful information anisotropies inhomogeneities structures. been implemented freely available software MIST.