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Automated Quantification of the Impact of the Wood-decay fungus Physisporinus vitreus on the Cell Wall Structure of Norway spruce by Tomographic Microscopy

Wood-decay fungi decompose their substrate by extracellular, degradative enzymes and play an important role in natural ecosystems by recycling carbon and minerals fixed in plants. Thereby, they cause significant damage to the wood structure and limit the use of wood as building material. Besides their role as biodeteriorators wood-decay fungi can be used for biotechnological purposes, e.g. the white-rot fungus Physisporinus vitreus for improving the uptake of preservatives and wood-modification substances of refractory wood. Therefore, the visualization and the quantification of microscopic decay patterns are important for the study of the impact of wood-decay fungi in general, as well as for wood-decay fungi and microorganisms with possible applications in biotechnology. In the present work, we developed a method for the automated localization and quantification of microscopic cell wall elements (CWE) of Norway spruce wood such as bordered pits, intrinsic defects, hyphae or alterations induced by P. vitreus using high resolution X-ray computed tomographic microscopy. In addition to classical destructive wood anatomical methods such as light or laser scanning microscopy, our method allows for the first time to compute the properties (e.g. area, orientation and size-distribution) of CWE of the tracheids in a sample. This is essential for modeling the influence of microscopic CWE to macroscopic properties such as wood strength and permeability.