A Decade of Generative Adversarial Networks for Porous Material Reconstruction

Digital reconstruction of porous materials has become increasingly critical for applications ranging from geological reservoir characterization to tissue engineering and electrochemical device design. While traditional methods such as micro-computed tomography and statistical reconstruction approaches have established foundations in this field, the emergence of deep learning techniques, particularly Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), has revolutionized porous media reconstruction capabilities. This review systematically analyzes 96 peer-reviewed articles published from 2017 to early 2026, examining the evolution and applications of GAN-based approaches for porous material image reconstruction. We categorize GAN architectures into six distinct classes, namely Vanilla GANs, Multi-Scale GANs, Conditional GANs, Attention-Enhanced GANs, Style-based GANs, and Hybrid Architecture GANs. Our analysis reveals substantial progress including improvements in porosity accuracy (within 1% of original samples), permeability prediction (up to 79% reduction in mean relative errors), and achievable reconstruction volumes (from initial $64^3$ to current $2{,}200^3$ voxels). Despite these advances, persistent challenges remain in computational efficiency, memory constraints for large-scale reconstruction, and maintaining structural continuity in 2D-to-3D transformations. This systematic analysis provides a comprehensive framework for selecting appropriate GAN architectures based on specific application requirements.

Well Log-Guided Synthesis of Subsurface Images from Sparse Petrography Data Using cGANs

Pore-scale imaging of subsurface formations is costly and limited to discrete depths, creating significant gaps in reservoir characterization. To address this, we present a conditional Generative Adversarial Network (cGAN) framework for synthesizing realistic thin section images of carbonate rock formations, conditioned on porosity values derived from well logs. The model is trained on 5,000 sub-images extracted from 15 petrography samples over a depth interval of 1992-2000m, the model generates geologically consistent images across a wide porosity range (0.004-0.745), achieving 81% accuracy within a 10\% margin of target porosity values. The successful integration of well log data with the trained generator enables continuous pore-scale visualization along the wellbore, bridging gaps between discrete core sampling points and providing valuable insights for reservoir characterization and energy transition applications such as carbon capture and underground hydrogen storage.