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Non-destructive testing (NDT) is a scientific discipline which examines the internal
structures of industrial components such as machine parts, pipes and ropes without
destroying them. Industrial pieces require critical inspection before they are assembled
into a finished product in order to ensure safety stability, and usefulness of the finished object.
A common class of features in this context are defects such as
pores and shrinkage cavities in varying cast parts, as well as more complex materials
with a broad spectrum of different inclusions, like minerals or asphalt.
In recent years, 3D CT has become common in NDT, which has created powerful
new possibilities, but also new challenges for the inspection and testing process.
Industrial CT volumes are generally quite large, with voxels commonly stored with
16 bits of precision, which leads to several hundred MB to one or more GB of
raw data per scan. Real-time volume rendering has become an essential tool for
visualizing these volumes. However, for NDT practitioners visualization is just
one part of the workflow, which includes a variety of processing tasks such as defect
detection and quantification, computing statistical measures and properties such as
material porosity, performing accurate measurements and comparisons, and many
more. We work in co-operation with the Austrian Foundry Research Institute
(ÖGI) with the goal to explore industrial CT volumes, and facilitate the whole quantification
approach of the components at hand.
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