Feasibility Study for Application of Total-Variation-Based Noise-Removal Algorithm with 450-kVp High-Energy Industrial Computed-Tomography Imaging System for Non-destructive Testing

摘要

Several important technological trends for the detection of faults in the internal structure of a material utilize industrial computed-tomography (CT) X-ray imaging systems in non-destructive testing (NDT). In this system, the total-variation-(TV)-based noise-removal algorithm is a powerful method for denoising with a high edge-information preservation. In this study, we confirm the application feasibility of the TV-based noise-removal algorithm with an established 450-kVp high-energy industrial CT imaging system for NDT. The results obtained using two phantoms (SEDENTEX cone-beam CT image-quality phantom and pressure-head phantom) with our established imaging system reveal excellent normalized noise power spectrum, contrast-to-noise ratio, and coefficient of variation of the images obtained using the TV-based noise-removal algorithm. Therefore, this study reveals that the TV-based noise-removal algorithm can improve the noise characteristics in an industrial CT imaging system for NDT.