State-of-the-art image scanning devices with spatial resolution down to 25 microns and 8-bit intensity resolution currently are sold for $40,000 to $60,000; systems with 12-bit resolution for more demanding applications are priced yet higher. Also, increased image resolution means larger volumes of data to process, which leads to increased speed requirements (and thus increased cost) for the processing system to keep overall inspection times reasonable. Consequently, demanding applications still tend to be served by special-purpose expensive hardware. One NDE radiograph image processing system receiving much attention at this time is the Scan IV system by DuPont. This system consists of a high-resolution (35 microns spatial resolution and 3.5 decades light intensity dynamic range) digitizer, a workstation-class computer augmented by several add-on image processing boards, high-capacity (~2 gigabyte), high-speed optical disk drives, a video signal digitizer for incorporating real-time video images into the system, 3 image display CRTs, and a high-resolution digital film recorder for film hardcopy output (Eizember, 1990). This system is presently sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars and reportedly requires several person-months of time to set up and get running. Other radiographic image processing systems have been developed at Ohio State University, the Army Materials Technology Laboratory, and the Electric Power Research Institute, among others (Sheppard, 1987). The high price of such systems keeps their sales volume low, and so highperformance radiograph image processing is presently not a commodity. Development of software products for these systems tends to proceed slowly, with custom work being done for each customer and with software not being portable between different high-end systems. There seems to be widespread agreement that the "traditional approach of using custom hardware and software to address the imaging applications has actually retarded the growth of new imaging technology by keeping prices high and not addressing the issue of standards conformity required to spur application development" (Pfeiffer, 1990, p. 36). The imaging industry has begun to respond to the difficulties presented by high-priced custom image processing systems. Pfeiffer (1990) argues that
INTRODUCTIONThe purpose of this paper is to describe the engineering features of industrial NDE image processing workstation software currently under development in the Iowa State University Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. The software package is designed for use on a generic image processing platform consisting of a commercially available UNIX workstationclass host computer interfaced to a frame grabber board and video camera, and incorporates image processing software developed at ISU's Center for NDE. This image processing software has been developed for use on noisy, low-contrast x-ray images, and has demonstrated its ability to enhance and extract flaws in such images. PACKAGE DESIGN OBJECfiVES AND FEATURESThe design objectives of this project are based on perceived user needs gathered through interaction with the industrial sponsors of the Center for NDE at Iowa State University. These sponsors have indicated that they would like to see an integrated image capture and processing workstation with both a large repertoire of image processing capability and a friendly, intuitive user interface.Thus, the package design objectives are: 1) To provide a user-friendly interface to image processing software that is particularly useful for NDE image processing. 2) To allow the user to produce useful results (i.e. detected flaws) without requiring him/her to become an image processing expert. 3) To provide a wide range of utilities such as image compression and annotation, image file format conversions, audit trails of image processing steps, and macro building. 4) To provide an interface for users who wish to add their own processing algorithms to the package. 5) To make the software as device-independent as possible. 6) To make modification and enhancement of the package by a software developer straightforward. Review of Progress in 1073The user interface allows selection and execution of package functions through an organized hierarchy of menus. The user selects menu items by pointing and clicking with a mouse, and enters input parameters using the mouse and/or the keyboard. On-line help is provided for each menu item and is accessed by clicking the appropriate mouse button on the item. (A twobutton mouse is assumed in the design of the package.) Several different types of windows are used to pass information between the user and the program. On-line help, as well as package configuration information, is displayed in the Information Window. Menu Windows display available menu selections. The Acknowledgement Window advises the user of dangerous situations (e.g. unsaved data in buffer when the user quits the program), and has graphics "buttons" to allow the user to either take the action advised in the window or ignore the message. The Value Window allows the user to interactively change the value of an input parameter to an image processing routine in an interactive processing session. The System Window provides a UNIX shell in which the user may execute UNIX commands from within the package. Image ...
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