# How to show thickness distribution of a thin layer

**URL:** <https://discourse.slicer.org/t/how-to-show-thickness-distribution-of-a-thin-layer/7518>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [July 11, 2019, 3:39am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/how-to-show-thickness-distribution-of-a-thin-layer/7518 "2019-07-11T03:39:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![11125](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/11125/32/4134_2.png) [@11125](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/11125)\
**Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 3:39am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/how-to-show-thickness-distribution-of-a-thin-layer/7518/1 "2019-07-11T03:39:30Z")

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I have a micro-CT file of a coating. I want to demonstrate the coating thickness distribution as a color contour image. Can 3d slicer do so? Or is there a function I can get the thickness data matrix registered to the coating top surface?

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**Author:** ![pieper](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/pieper/32/8_2.png) [@pieper](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/pieper)\
**Post date:** [July 11, 2019, 2:45pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/how-to-show-thickness-distribution-of-a-thin-layer/7518/2 "2019-07-11T14:45:52Z")

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I don’t think there’s anything already implemented to do that, but it wouldn’t be too much work to write something that calculates it (depends a lot on the exact properties of your data, like if you are able to easily segment the coating). Depending on how it images in the ct you might also get a reasonable visualization with volume rendering.

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**Author:** ![lassoan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/lassoan/32/13_2.png) [@lassoan](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/lassoan)\
**Post date:** [July 21, 2019, 3:17am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/how-to-show-thickness-distribution-of-a-thin-layer/7518/3 "2019-07-21T03:17:03Z")

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How to measure thickness of a segmented structure is described here:

> [@How to analyze the thickness of the model](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/how-to-analyze-the-thickness-of-the-model/2735/2):
>
> “Thickness” is not a very well defined term for models (surface meshes), but for shell-like meshes it is probably not too difficult to estimate it robustly and accurately. Potential approaches: A. Extract medial surface and estimate thickness as 2x of distance from medial surface. There are various ways of computing these in Slicer. One possible workflow: Compute medial surface using Simple Filters module - BinaryThinningImageFilter. Compute distance map using Simple Filters module - Daniels…