When Wilhelm Rontgen discovered X-rays in the 1890s, he almost immediately discovered the imaging applications of this hitherto-unknown type of radiation, and experts in the medical community and the industrial nondestructive testing community rapidly seized on the potential this new science of radiography offered. Within 20 years, X-ray sources had become both potent and portable, making X-ray imaging a ubiquitous and essential tool in the field of nondestructive testing. Even over 80 years after James Chadwick discovered the neutron and its radiographic applications in the 1930s, though, neutron radiography, or N-ray, has yet to become as ubiquitous as X-ray. N-ray is a powerful NDT tool, but its accessibility lags behind X-radiography. However, modern technology is closing the technology and accessibility gap between N-ray and X-ray imaging.
Radiographic inspection uses penetrating radiation to produce images depicting an object’s internal structure. Because different forms of radiation have different means of interacting with materials, an NDT professional can pick up on a wider range of details using multiple methods of radiography than if they only used one.