Development and characterization of a 3D cone beam tomography system

Abstract

3D Visualization of the interior of an object has been one of the important goals of NDT, which has many applications. It can be used for examination of defects and cracks in their full three-dimensional perspective and reverse engineering applications. This paper describes the development and characterization of a high dynamic range cooled CCD-based cone beam tomography system for industrial applications and in particular for the NDT of materials used in the nuclear industry. The novel feature of this system is its ability to distinguish minor variations in the attenuation coefficients with very high resolution. The paper also discusses the development of software implementation of Feldkamp formulation for reconstruction, testing with mathematically simulated phantom, and hardware used in the work. The system is characterized in terms of MTF both in the mid-plane and off-midplane are also discussed in this paper. We will present results of experiments conducted on a variety of samples of nuclear and industrial use.