NDT&E International, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp.

157-162, 1996
Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd
Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved
ELSEVIER PII: S0963-8695(96)00009-6 0963-8695/96 $15.00+ 0.00

An a u t o m a t e d r a d i o g r a p h i c N D T
system for weld inspection:
Part I - W e l d e x t r a c t i o n
T. Warren Liao *t and Jiawei Ni*
*Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Department, *Electrical and Computer
Engineering Department, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
Received 17 July 1995; revised 25 October 1995

An automated radiographic N DT system for weld inspection is developed. The entire

system consists of two major components: weld extraction and flaw detection.
Welds are first extracted from digitized radiographic images. The extracted welds are
then processed by flaw detection algorithms to determine their qualities. This paper
describes the weld extraction methodology, which forms the first part of the system.
An example is used to illustrate the working of the methodology. The methodology is
concluded to be effective for weld extraction after being successfully tested with 25
images. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd

Keywords: radiographic images, weld inspection, pattern recognition

Welded structures often have to be tested nondestruc-
tively, particularly for critical applications where weld
failure can be catastrophic, such as in pressure vessels,
load-bearing structural members, and power plants.
Nondestructive testing techniques for welded joints
usually include visual, radiographic, magnetic particle,
liquid penetrant, and ultrasonic testing methods. Of
interest in this paper i~ the radiographic testing (RT)
technique.
Conventionally, a radiographic image is produced by
permitting the X-ray or gamma-ray source to penetrate
an object and expose a photographic film. Film radio-
graphy produces 'negative' images which are normally
viewed in 'static' mode using a view box by a certified
inspector. The intensity of exposure of a particular point
on the film depends primarily on the object density, the
source-object-film geometry, the type of film, and the
developing process. The information content of a
radiograph depends upon the absorption characteristics
of the object, which are determined by the thickness,
density, and material properties of the object exposed at
a selected energy level. X-ray is primarily used in the
examination of welds in thinner gauge materials where
flaws are likely to be small, fine and difficult to detect.
Gamma-radiography is used for thicker welds, especially
tCorresponding author: 3128 CEBA, IMSE Dept., LSU, Baton
Rouge, LA 70803, USA. E-mail: liao@rsip.lsu.edu
in situations, such as on site, where portability of the
equipment is needed. Gamma-ray sources are much used
for the radiography of pipe welds.
The quality of radiographic images is a key factor for
detecting weld flaws. The image quality of film radio-
graphy is usually measured by the flaw sensitivity using
various image-quality indicators (IQIs). To increase the
ability to detect small and narrow cracks, the RT
technique must be optimized by a proper selection of
all influential factors. The important factors in film
radiography include film type, film density, energy level
of the source, focus-to-film distance, exposure time, and
developer temperature. Discussions related to these
topics can be seen in References 1-6. Article 2 of
Subsection (a) of ASTM Section V specifies RT
requirements for welds. Weld flaws are typically
characterized by a local variation in material density,
which manifests itself as a local variation in image
intensity in the resulting radiographic image.
Radiographic inspection is performed to reach a decision
about the acceptability of the component or product
being tested. Before any evaluation can be made, the
interpreter must be certain that the images are
satisfactory. In addition, the interpreter must have a
solid understanding of the following in order to be
successful with the interpretation of the radiographic
film for welding quality.
• principles of radiographic examinations

157
 T. W. Liao and J. Ni
• welding processes, their associated flaws, and their
images as they appear on the radiograph
• the acceptance criteria as specified in the referenced
codes and standards.
Reference 7 provides a guide to types of discontinuities
identified in American Petroleum Institute (API)
Standard 1104 and their images as they appear in the
radiographic film.
It takes time to train a film interpreter. In addition,
human interpretation of weld quality based on film
radiography is very subjective, inconsistent, labour
intensive, and sometimes biased. It is thus desirable to
develop some forms of computer-aided systems to assist
the human interpreter in evaluating the quality of welded
joints. This involves the digitization of film radiography
and the development of algorithms to extract welds and
to identify flaws in the welds. Nowadays, radiographic
film images can be digitized by a digital radiography
system (digitizer) without losing the useful information
captured in the original radiograph [8]. Digitized radio-
graphic images not only enable more-efficient manage-
ment of radiographic inspection data, but also make
automatic inspection of welds [9] and closed-loop process
control (1°] possible.
The Advanced Quality Technology Group of Martin
Marietta Manned Space Systems has been supporting
research projects related to computer-aided or auto-
mated inspection of the Space Shuttle External Tank
Welds [1]-13]. An ongoing project, partially supported
by Martin Marietta Manned Space Systems, is being
conducted at Louisiana State University for the devel-
opment of an automated weld inspection system. The
objective is to provide machine-aided support to the X-
ray film examination staff, while improving quality and
reducing cost. This paper presents a methodology
developed for welds extraction as a part of the
automated inspection system.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The
acquisition of radiographic images is described in the
next section. The weld extraction methodology is then
presented. The test results are then provided and
discussed, followed by the conclusions.
Acquisition of radiographic images
X-ray film strips of about 3.5 inches wide by 17 inches
long were digitized four at a time using the NDT SCAN
II digitizer. Refer to Reference 8 for a detailed
description of the digitizer. Four strips were laid on the
digitizer at once with the scan direction orthogonal to the
long axis of the strips. The strips were digitized at 70 #m
resolutions (about seven lp/mm) to produce 5000-pixel
by 6000-line images. This results in large X-ray images
(30 million pixels) that must be processed to find
anomalies in welds. Along with each 5000-pixel by
6000-line image, a decimated image 20 times smaller
158
(250-pixel by 300-line) was also produced. Each pixel has
12 bits. The digitized images are all stored in VICOM file
format. The images contain reference objects to identify
positions in the welds or to calibrate the intensity of the
X-rays. These objects include rulers, penetrometers,
densitometers, identification letters, space between weld
strips, etc. Only the items within a weld are of interest.
Twenty-five probability-of-detection (POD) tapes, pre-
pared originally for the project conducted by Martin
Marietta Electronics, Information & Missiles Group for
Martin Marietta Manned Space Systems (M3SS), were
used in this study. Each POD tape was prepared as
described above and was designated with a number. The
existence of weld anomalies was established by experts
examining the X-rays using existing tools at M3SS. The
expert identified the type of anomaly, its approximate
location (measured in inches with a ruler) relative to the
upper left corner of the image, and the 'size' of the object.
The POD test was designed to produce the data from
which a probability of detection curve as a function of
the object's size could be produced. It is intended to give
a first measure of the confidence that objects of a
particular size have been found. The scope of this paper
is restricted to weld extraction. The results of flaw
detection will be reported in another paper.
Weld extraction methodology
Since only the items within a weld are of interest, it is
preferred to extract the welds (four in total) from each
image before applying flaw detection algorithms. The
250-pixel by 300-line decimated images were used for this
purpose to reduce the amount of data needed to be
processed, thus shortening the processing time. Figure 1
shows a typical decimated image (POD 15). The extrac-
tion methodology was developed using the Khoros
software package[14] installed on a Sun SPARC5 work-
station. Data conversion from VICOM to VIF format
was performed on all images to enable their processing in
the Khoros environment.
The methodology was developed based on the observa-
tion that the intensity plot of a weld looks more like
Gaussian than the other objects in the image. This was
manifested by an intensity plot of a line image, as shown
in Figure 2, extracted from Figure 1. The weld extraction
methodology consisted of the following steps:
(1) Divide the image into four approximately equal
parts (each part is called a subqmage) vertically.
These four sub-images are called imagek, k = 0, 1,2,
and 3. The first three sub-images (from right to left)
are 62 pixels wide, computed by taking the smallest
integer of 250/4. The width of the fourth sub-image
is 64 ( - - 2 5 0 - 3 × 62). Each sub-image contains
exactly one weld.
(2) S e t k = 0 .
(3) Process imagek.
(4) Set the no. of iterations I = 0.
 An automated radiographic N DT system

Calculate the width of each object. The peak

(trough) detection algorithm is detailed below.
(8) Compute the similarity between the intensity plot of
each object and its Gaussian in terms of mean
square error (MSE). More discussion of this step is
given below.
(9) Identify the object with the lowest MSE to be the
weld. Record the location and the width of the
weld. An incorrect identification of the weld could
occur in the case that the intensity plot of the weld is
distorted due to flaws or a non-weld object, most
likely the space between film strips, looking more
like Gaussian than the weld.
(10) Calculate two slopes: the slope between the peak
location of the first line image and the peak location
of the second line image; and the slope between the
peak location of the first line image and the peak
location of the third line image.
(11) Compute the difference between the above two
slopes. A 5% difference is used as the criterion to
determine whether an incorrect identification of the
weld has been made.
(12) Increment I by one and go to Step 5, if the
difference is larger than 5%.
Figure I Typical radiographic (decimated) weld image (POD15) (13) Find the maximum width of the weld. Use the slope
to determine the centre locations of the starting
I nfens Tfy PI of (y=130) and the end positions of the entire weld. Add one
half of the maximum width to the centre location
~4
having the larger x value and let it be the right-
boundary of the weld. Subtract one half of the
maximum width to the centre location having the
N
smaller x value and let it be the left-boundary of the
weld. Extract the weld based on the boundaries.
(14) Increment k by one and go to Step 3 if k < 3.
~3 m (15) For each decimated image, four welds are found.
J
o The weld location information is used to extract
welds from the full images. The extracted welds can
Oo
i. 0 m
then be used for detecting flaws in the welds.

Peak (trough) detection

I I
o I
o 50 I O0 150
Figure 2 Intensity plot of a line image extracted from Figure 1
(5) Extract three line images corresponding to
y = 0 + I , 100+1, and 200 + I .
(6) Detect objects in each line image by applying the
peak detection algorithm. Increment I by one and
go to Step 5 if no peak is found in any one of the line
images. This usually occurs when line images are
extracted from the top portion of the image.
(7) For each line image, find the troughs associated
with each of the objects detected in the previous
step by applying the trough detection algorithm.
Peaks (troughs) are detected by watching for sign
changes in the slope of the line image: slope = f ( x ) -
f(x-1). The number of peaks (troughs) detected is
affected by the window size used. Window size indicates
I
200 2~g the number of steps on both sides of a point that must be
monotonically increasing/decreasing before the point
will be counted as a peak or trough. The smallest window
size is one. Increasing the window size will tend to reduce
the number of peaks (troughs) found. A larger window
size is thus often used for 'smoothing' the data. If a flat
peak is encountered, the last point of the flat area will be
assigned as the peak position
Peak detection is applied to identify the objects in a line
image. The window size is chosen to be three, which is
large enough to prevent identifying a local variation as a
peak and small enough to identify a weld as a peak. This
value is selected based on the observation that the
smallest width of welds is at least ten pixels wide.

159
 T. W. Liao and J, Ni

Trough detection is applied to find all the troughs in a

line image using the smallest window size, i.e., one. For
each peak identified in peak detection, a pair of troughs
symmetric to the peak is found. The closest trough to
the peak is first located and considered to be one of the
troughs associated with the peak. Once one of the troughs
has been located, the other trough can be easily
determined. If the located trough is on the left-hand
side (right-hand side) of the peak, the other trough is
determined by adding (subtracting) the distance between
the closest trough and the peak to (from) the peak
position.

Similarity between an object and its Gaussian

The similarity between the intensity plot of each object
and its Gaussian plot is defined in terms of mean square
error (MSE). Assume that the object is centred at x = X
and its left- and right-troughs are located at x = X - d
and X + d, MSE is calculated as follows:
X+d
Z f(x) -g(x)
MSE = x=X-a
2d (1)
where d is the distance between the peak and its closest
trough.
The object with a smaller MSE is considered to be more
similar to Gaussian. Since the intensity plot of a weld
generally looks more like Gaussian than the other
objects, the object with the lowest MSE is tentatively
identified as the weld. For comparing the MSEs of
objects, a normalization operation is performed on each
object by dividing the intensity of each pixel by the
summation of the intensities of all the pixels belong to
the object (bounded by its left-trough and right-trough).
The normalized Gaussian intensity plot of an object
centred at x = X has the following mathematical
function:
1 e_(x_X)2/2a2
~rx/~ (2)
where c~is the width parameter of the object. The cr value
is determined by the relationship FWHM = 2.35a,
where FWHM is the full width at half maximum. The
FWHM value is computed by first identifying the
maximum intensity of the object, followed by the finding
of the x positions of the intensity plot of half maximum.
The maximum intensity of an object is the intensity of the
peak of the object.
Test results and discussions
The decimated image of POD15, as shown in Figure 1,
is arbitrarily chosen and used to illustrate the weld
extraction methodology. According to the methodology,
the image is first divided into four parts: imageo, image1,
imagee, and image3 from right to left. Figure 3 shows
Figure 3 Sub-image (image2) extracted from Figure 1
image2. Note that the negative of the original is shown
here for the sake of better visualization.
The intensity plots of three line images (Figure 4)
extracted from image2, corresponding to y = 30, 130,
and 230, is used to illustrate the working of Steps 5-11.
These three line images are called image2 30, image2_130,
and image2 230, respectively. Setting the window size
equal to three, the peak detection algorithm finds 1, 3,
and 1 peaks for image2_30, image2_130, and image2_230,
respectively. The peaks for image l30, called image_
130_peakO, image2130_peakl, and image2_130_peak2
from left to right, are located at x = 23, 36, and 54 with
intensity levels of 254, 97, and 46, respectively. Figure 5
shows the positions and intensities of these detected
peaks. Setting the window size equal to one, the trough
detection algorithm finds 6, 4 and 4 troughs for image2_
30, image2_130, and image2_230, respectively. Figure 6
shows the positions and intensities of the detected troughs
for image2_130. The troughs closest to image2_130_peakO,
image2130_peakl, and image2_130_peak2 are deter-
mined to be the true troughs corresponding to each of
the peaks.
As described earlier, the MSE of each object is
calculated. The intensity of each object is first normal-
ized. The peak intensity of an object is next used to
compute its FWHM, which is then used to compute the
width parameter, a, of the object. For image2 130_peakO,
image2_130_peakl, and image2 130_peak2, their as
are calculated to be 3.404255, 1.702128, and 1.702128,
respectively. According to Eq. (1), Gaussian plots

160
 An automated radiographic NDT system

Peaks D e f e c t e d
Intensity Plot (y=3o) 4-

p
n --

o
0 --
el

>

J
O
m
Oo
>~-
e
J

Oo

, J

0 --

~o ,t.o el

Inten~

F----------
l-ty PLot (y=130)

o
0
I
20 &O
I
A I
61

Figure 5 Peaks detected in image2_130

;° T rough s Defected
O
J

io

I I 7 OO _
20 ~o 81
0
Intensify Plot (y=230) J I

o
--o
>
e
e o

k,

JU 0

Figure 6
,
0
A
20
I

Troughs detected in image2_ 730

I
A 61
I

weld due to its lowest MSE value. Similarly, the welds

I I
20 J.O
Figure 4 Intensity plots of three line images extracted from the
sub-image in Figure 3
corresponding to the detected objects are determined.
The MSE of an object and its Gaussian is calculated. The
MSE of image2_130_peakO, image2130_peak1, and
image2_130_peak2 are computed to be 0.021247,
0.001638, and 0.006999, respectively. The object asso-
ciated with image2_130_peak1 is considered to be the
in image2_30 and image2_230 are found to be centred at
I x = 35 and 37, respectively. The slope of the line
• I
connecting the peak positions of imagee_30 and
image2_130 and the slope of the line connecting the
peak positions of image230 and imagee230 are
calculated to be (36-35)/(130-30) and (37-35)/(230-
30), respectively. The weld locations identified are
concluded to be correct because the difference between
these two slopes is smaller than 0.0005 (= 0.5*(36-35)/
(130-30)).
Following the steps of weld extraction methodology, the
four welds in the decimated image of POD15 are

161
 T. W. Liao and J. Ni
Figure 7 Welds extracted (marked by black lines) from Figure 1
extracted. For presentation purposes, each extracted
weld is marked with two black lines right on its
boundaries. The result is shown in Figure 7 (similar to
Figure 3, the negative of the original is shown for the
sake of better visualization). The weld location informa-
tion obtained from processing the decimated images can
be utilized to extract welds from the corresponding
fullsize images. The methodology is found to have 100%
accuracy after being tested with all the 25 POD tapes
made available for this study.
The methodology presented in this paper is designed
to extract welds having relatively straight line shapes.
Modification of the methodology is needed before it can
be applied to extract curved welds, which might be the
case in some applications. Based on the results of this
study, further research has been planned to develop a
more general methodology for the extraction of linear as
well as curved welds.
Conclusions
A methodology developed for the extraction of welds
from digitized radiographic images was discussed. The
162
working of the methodology was clearly illustrated using
a sample image. The methodology constitutes the first
part of an automated radiographic NDT system for weld
quality inspection. To prove its effectiveness, the
methodology was tested with all 25 images made
available for this study. The test results show that the
methodology is capable of extracting all linear welds
correctly. The extracted welds are being processed by
flaw detection algorithms to determine their qualities.
The results of flaw detection will be presented in a
forthcoming paper.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the support of Martin
Marietta Manned Space Systems and the Board of
Regents, State of Louisiana through the LEQSF(1994-
96) RD-B-06 grant.
References
1 Yan, Li. 'Optimizing radiographic NDT techniques for welds',
N D T & E Intern 27, 1 (1994) pp 15-20
2 Halmshaw, R. 'Flaw sensitivity in relation to standards for film
radiography', Mater Eval (June 1992) pp 678-683
3 Bowles, W. and Mayberry, G. 'Selecting radiographic film: consid-
erations for the shop', Mater Eval (March 1988) pp 426-427
4 Wysnewski, R. E. 'Quantitative evaluation of radiographic ima-
ging variables', Mater Eval (June 1983) pp 826-830
5 Domanus, J. C. 'Testing of sensitometric properties and image
quality of radiographic film and paper by a fast and simple
method', Mater Eval (February 1987) pp 80-85
6 Becker, G. 'Radiographic image interpretation', Mater Eval
(October 1988) pp 1390-1392
7 Perrone, T. F. 'Principles of radiographic film interpretation of
pipeline welds', Mater Eval (November 1992) pp 1268-1273
8 Graeme, W. A., Jr, Eizember, A C and Douglass, J. 'Digital image
analysis of nondestructive testing radiographs', Mater Eval
(February 1990) pp 117-120
9 Gayer, A., Saya, A. and Shiloh, A. 'Automatic recognition of
welding defects in real-time radiography', N D T Intern 23, 3
(1990) pp 131-136
10 Rokhlin, S. I., Cho, K. and Gun, A. C. 'Closed-loop process control
of weld penetration using real-time radiography', Mater Eval
(March 1989) pp 363-369
11 Yeh, P.-S., Le Moigne, J. and Fong, C. B. 'Computer-aided X-ray
film interpretation', M M L TR 88-76, Martin Marietta Labora-
tories, Baltimore, Maryland, 1988
12 Basart, J. P. and Xu, J. 'Automatic Detection of Flaws in Welds',
Final Report to Martin Marietta M S S Contract #A71445, Center
for NDE, Iowa State University, 1991
13 Cloud, E., Fraser, K. and Krywick, S. 'Automated examination
of X-ray welds', Final Report to Martin Marietta MSS, Martin
Marietta Electronics, Information & Missiles Group, Orlando,
Florida, 1992
14 Konstantinides, K. and Rasure, J. R. 'The Khoros software devel-
opment environment for image and signal processing', IEEE
Trans. Image Proc 3, 3 (1994) pp 243-252