Development of Stand Alone Application Tool for Processing and Quality Measurement of Weld Imperfection Image Captured by μ-Focused Digital Radiography Using MATLAB- Based Graphical User Interface

Abstract

Digital radiography incresingly is being applied in the fabrication industry. Compared to film- based radiography, digitally radiographed images can be acquired with less time and fewer exposures. However, noises can simply occur on the digital image resulting in a low-quality result. Due to this and the system’s complexity, parameters’ sensitivity, and environmental effects, the results can be difficult to interpret, even for a radiographer. Therefore, the need of an application tool to improve and evaluate the image is becoming urgent. In this research, a user-friendly tool for image processing and image quality measurement was developed. The resulting tool contains important components needed by radiograph inspectors in analyzing defects and recording the results. This tool was written by using image processing and the graphical user interface development environment and compiler (GUIDE) toolbox available in Matrix Laboratory (MATLAB) R2008a. In image processing methods, contrast adjustment, and noise removal, edge detection was applied. In image quality measurement methods, mean square error (MSE), peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), modulation transfer function (MTF), normalized signal-to-noise ratio (SNRnorm), sensitivity and unsharpness were used to measure the image quality. The graphical user interface (GUI) wass then compiled to build a Windows, stand-alone application that enables this tool to be executed independently without the installation of MATLAB.

Keywords

• digital radiography, modulation transfer function, peak signal-to-noise ratio, mean squared error, matrix laboratory