GEOMETRICAL ANALYSIS OF SEGMENTED ULTRASONIC FLAW REGIONS

Abstract The automated or manual evaluation of ultrasonic NDT data involves the initial identification of suspect flaw regions from different probe inspections, and then the comparison and correlation of the physical parameters associated with each extracted region. This paper describes a general technique for deriving a series of geometrical attributes for a suspect indication which has been segmented from three-dimensional ultrasonic images. The attributes are position, orientation, approximate size, and surface texture. This approach, which may be applied to any form of imaged flaw indication, involves the calculation of a best-fit cuboid, or "bounding-box”, for the contained data points. A number of real ultrasonic inspection data-sets are employed to illustrate the method proposed.