RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
AT MICROVISTA

Sin­ce 2011, we have been inves­t­ing in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment for image enhance­ment in CT scans and the auto­ma­tic eva­lua­ti­on of the scans with regard to dimen­sio­nal and struc­tu­ral OK/NOK criteria.

Sin­ce the begin­ning of this year, we have been sup­port­ed by an addi­tio­nal employee who, as an inno­va­ti­on assistant, will devo­te hims­elf to a new rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment pro­ject fun­ded by the sta­te of Sax­o­ny-Anhalt with the sup­port of the Euro­pean Social Fund (ESF). We would like to pro­vi­de infor­ma­ti­on about this pro­ject in the following.

The pro­ject “Inves­ti­ga­ti­on to impro­ve the image qua­li­ty of CT images for the auto­ma­ti­on of struc­tu­ral inspec­tions” runs in the peri­od from 01.01.2019 to 31.12.2019 and will be car­ri­ed out at our site in Blan­ken­burg (Harz).

When inspec­ting com­pon­ents by means of com­pu­ted tomo­gra­phy, the dif­fe­rent atte­nua­ti­on of the X‑rays hit­ting each indi­vi­du­al detec­tor cell is exploi­ted to gene­ra­te images for each pro­jec­tion. The­se atte­nua­ti­on dif­fe­ren­ces then mani­fest them­sel­ves in the recon­s­truc­ted volu­me data set as con­s­truc­tively desi­red inter­nal voids or as gray level dif­fe­ren­ces in are­as of theo­re­ti­cal­ly homo­ge­neous mate­ri­al. The­se unex­pec­ted gray value dif­fe­ren­ces can result from struc­tu­ral defects such as struc­tu­ral loo­sening and pores, but also from inclu­si­ons of a for­eign material.

When mate­ri­als are to be distin­gu­is­hed that have simi­lar den­si­ties, the­re is often a lack of suf­fi­ci­ent­ly high con­trast. The pro­ject aims to find sui­ta­ble exami­na­ti­on para­me­ters and stra­te­gies to achie­ve con­trast enhancement.

If the inno­va­ti­on is suc­cessful, Micro­vis­ta would be able to eva­lua­te lay­er ana­ly­ses and pos­si­bly other struc­tu­ral exami­na­ti­ons auto­ma­ti­cal­ly ins­tead of manu­al­ly so far, so that the­se can be offe­red at a more attrac­ti­ve price.