In experimental mechanics, where 3D imaging is having a profound effect, spheres are commonly adopted for their simplicity and for the ease of their modeling. In this contribution we develop an analytical tool, 'kalisphera', to produce 3D raster images of spheres including their partial volume effect. This allows us to evaluate the metrological performance of existing image-based measurement techniques (knowing a priori the ground truth). An advanced application of 'kalisphera' is developed here to identify and accurately characterize spheres in real 3D x-ray tomography images with the objective of improving trinarization and contact detection. The effect of the common experimental imperfections is assessed and the overall performance of the tool tested on real images.