Key Takeaways

  • Hyperspectral core scanning captures mineralogy and alteration information invisible to the naked eye, and it’s one of the most mature AI-adjacent technologies in exploration geology.
  • Leading systems: Corescan HCI-3, CSIRO/Epiroc HyLogger 4, and Minalyze MCore.
  • HyLogger 4 is the world’s first continuous visible-to-thermal-infrared core scanner (0.4–15 microns), adding mid-infrared for minerals invisible to earlier generations.
  • This is a “Yes” — deployed at national core libraries (Australia) and commercial operations, not experimental.

TL;DR

Run drill core through a hyperspectral scanner (HyLogger 4, Corescan HCI-3, or Minalyze MCore) to automatically generate mineralogy and alteration maps along the entire core length — data that would otherwise require selective, time-consuming point sampling with a spectrometer or petrographic microscope.

How Do I Automate Core Scanning With AI?

Core scanning solves a problem that spot-sampling can’t: alteration mineralogy often varies continuously along a drill hole, but traditional methods (petrography, point spectroscopy) only sample a handful of locations, potentially missing the pattern entirely. Hyperspectral core scanners instead capture continuous spectral data along the full core length, and AI/spectral-library matching converts that into a continuous mineralogy and alteration log.

HyLogger 4 — developed by CSIRO and now distributed through Epiroc — is the current state of the art: it’s the world’s first continuous scanner spanning visible through thermal infrared (380–15,500 nm), which means it can identify mineral groups (like certain silicates) invisible to earlier VNIR-SWIR-only systems, at up to 25-micron imagery resolution. Corescan’s HCI-3 combines VNIR-SWIR hyperspectral imaging with core photography and 3D laser profiling in one integrated scan, collecting roughly 800,000 spectral samples per metre. Minalyze MCore pairs hyperspectral/XRF scanning with LiDAR-based 3D modelling of the core tray itself, and its vendor reports cutting core evaluation time from weeks to minutes.

Practically, the workflow is: core goes through the scanner (often at a dedicated facility, sometimes on-site), spectral data gets automatically matched against reference mineral libraries to generate a mineralogy/alteration log, and that log feeds directly into your geological model as a proxy layer — often correlated against assay results to build alteration-vintage or clay-content models used later in geometallurgy. This is genuinely mature technology: HyLogger systems are deployed at national core libraries across Australia (including a 2025 installation at Londonderry Core Library, NSW) specifically because governments see the value in continuous, non-destructive mineralogical characterization of drill core.

Try It With Geocluster

Interpreting a hyperspectral mineralogy log against known alteration signatures for porphyry copper systems specifically is a research task that benefits from pulling in deposit-model literature quickly. Geocluster is built for exactly that kind of synthesis.