Knowledge Based User Support for Computed Tomography Measurements

X-Ray Computed Tomography (CT) has been successfully introduced into industrial applications in the last few years. Recent industrial needs aim at increasing the accessibility of CT technology to more users than only measurement experts. Suitable concepts for user support have been developed in the past. However, these user support concepts do not cover the entire measurement process and only a small variety of measurement tasks. To overcome these shortcomings and to support the user in an optimal manner, the existing concepts need to be integrated together with knowledge deduced from different measurements into a single software tool. In this paper, different types of knowledge based systems are compared and assessed in their ability to integrate knowledge of the measurement process, the form and material of the workpiece as well as quality parameters of the CT projections. The assessment is used to derive the structure of a suitable knowledge based system that addresses industrial needs regarding flexibility and usability. The results may be used in the future to develop a software tool for user support, which can be used in an industrial environment, enabling untrained users to utilize CT-based systems with a low measurement uncertainty.