Title :
Near field synthetic aperture ultrasonic imaging: non-destructive testing
Author :
Silverstein, Seth D. ; Thomas, Lewis J.
Author_Institution :
GE Corporate Res. & Dev., Schenectady, NY, USA
Abstract :
The results of a detailed analytical study of the effects of sensor signal processing techniques on clutter suppression and image enhancement for nondestructive testing (NDT) systems are presented. In the analysis described, a relatively simple beamforming/diffraction model is developed for near-field, wideband, synthetic aperture ultrasonic imaging in NDT systems. The physical model is used to quantitatively evaluate a variety of front-end sensor signal processing tradeoffs for enhanced detection and sizing of defects. It is shown using statistical microscopic scattering calculations that a combination of increased spatial sampling and windowing can increase the signal-to-clutter ratio by ~17 dB while maintaining crack size resolutions well below future projected specifications
Keywords :
acoustic imaging; acoustic signal processing; crack detection; image processing; ultrasonic materials testing; NDT; clutter suppression; crack detection; defects; front-end sensor signal processing tradeoffs; image enhancement; near field synthetic aperture US imaging; nondestructive testing; spatial sampling; ultrasonic imaging; windowing; Array signal processing; Diffraction; Image analysis; Image enhancement; Image sensors; Nondestructive testing; Sensor systems; Signal analysis; Signal processing; Ultrasonic imaging;
Conference_Titel :
Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1992. ICASSP-92., 1992 IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
San Francisco, CA
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-0532-9
DOI :
10.1109/ICASSP.1992.226283
