Advancements in technology continue to enhance the capabilities of all areas of industrial quality and process control, and this is certainly the case within the various disciplines of nondestructive testing (NDT). Whether we consider industrial radiography, ultrasonic testing, eddy current, or remote visual inspection (RVI), the name of the game is always higher resolution, greater detail, improved accuracy, and faster speeds.

In the same way that industrial radiography benefits from the huge R&D investments made in medical radiography, manufacturers and users of RVI equipment benefit from the technical breakthroughs achieved in medical endoscopy and other fields. For example, the improvements in micro cameras and lenses that are driven by the cell phone industry accrue in a trickle-down fashion to industrial video borescopes. The same can be said of the rapid gains made recently in micro COB (chip on board) LED illumination, which delivers extremely powerful light output from a circular footprint, perfect for the distal tip of a video borescope. These distally-mounted LEDs produce the same high intensity light that was previously only available in borescopes utilizing fiberoptic illumination, resulting in increased durability and lower costs.