The production of primary iron, intermediate step in steelmaking chain, is mostly done by the traditional route of blast furnace. However, alternative technologies are increasing their market share. Among the technologies, Tecnored is a very promising Brazilian ironmaking process and the goal of this master dissertation is the study of it iron-bearing burden. The Tecnored technology utilizes self-reduced iron ore briquettes in a modulate shaft furnace to obtain hot metal. The self-reduced agglomerates, cold bonded, are produced from a mixture of flux, binder, fines of iron ore, residues containing iron and carbonaceous material as a reducing agent. The burden characterization in ironmaking process is essential to study the pores distribution and evaluate the structural integrity and mechanics of fluids during the reduction process, and quantify and analyze the metallic iron distribution along the briquette’s volume. This dissertation main goal is to develop a new methodology of quantification of the metallic iron in selfreduced iron ore briquettes, through automatic routines of image processing, captured in bright field of a reflected light optical microscopy (MRL), and mapping pores and metallic iron automatically along the cross-sections analyzed. The tested briquettes utilized two reducing agents – coal fines (CM) and coke of petroleum (CVP), and it was submitted in two different reduction times and two different briquettes’ thickness. The experimental process presented some challenges, from the cross section cut to be polished and observed in MRL, to the identification and mapping of the phases in the briquettes. To validate the methodology, the results of the quantification of metallic iron through image analysis were compared to the results of the traditional technique of chemical analysis. The porosity and metallic iron maps provided a qualitative evaluation of reduction time and the effect of briquettes’ thickness, for each type of cabonaceus reducing agents.