For over a decade, 2D digital radiography (DR) has been aggressively replacing film radiography in applications spanning across most industries. DR image quality continues to improve with higher quality and faster speed flat panel detectors being offered. These new detectors, combined with smaller focal spot X-ray tubes and techniques employing geometric magnification, have brought the ability to produce an image quality far exceeding that of typical film radiography. Cycle times for radiographic acquisition have also been drastically reduced by using CNC controlled systems as well as robots for product and equipment positioning. All these factors combined have produced an efficiency in DR that is likely far beyond what early radiographers could have imagined. Time is money, so this has further reduced some of the cost of performing production radiography.
With the radiographic acquisition process finely tuned for production efficiency, the next area being aggressively looked at is the interpretation of the digital radiographs. Some “readers” can end up viewing and interpreting over a thousand DR images in a single shift, while others processing DR images of complex geometry products are forced to drastically slow down as the interpretation difficulty rises exponentially. For the less complex, high-volume products being evaluated, assisted or automatic defect recognition (ADR) software routines are now being aggressively considered.