Image quality enhancement in Neutron Computerized Tomography based on projection exposure time adjustment.

This paper presents a proposed procedure for neutron radiography image enhancement through studying the effect of the projection exposure time on the quality of Neutron Computerized Tomography (NCT) image. A sample was exposure at the Egyptian Second Research Reactor (ETRR-2) NCT facility with projection exposure time varying from one second to six seconds at reactor power operation of 17 MWth. The NCT image was corrected against the read-out noise using flat and dark current images. Then, the Region of Interest (ROI) is selected based on an automatic threshold of the occurrence histogram of the image variance. After that, the image was normalized and filtered by median filter. The resultant images were evaluated qualitatively and compared with the images obtained from Octopus 8.5 software that is currently used in the Egyptian NCT facility. The results indicated that high-quality images had accomplished in comparison with Octopus 8.5 software without losing any information. In addition, with respect to quality measures, the image at the projection exposure time equal to 4 seconds is the best obtained image.

[1]  Osama Zahran,et al.  Automatic weld defect identification from radiographic images , 2013 .

[2]  New analytical approach for neutron beam-hardening correction. , 2016, Applied radiation and isotopes : including data, instrumentation and methods for use in agriculture, industry and medicine.

[3]  Hany Kasban,et al.  Adaptive Radiographic Image Compression Technique using Hierarchical Vector Quantization and Huffman Encoding , 2018, J. Ambient Intell. Humaniz. Comput..

[4]  T Mongy.  Application of Neutron Tomography in Culture Heritage research. , 2014, Applied radiation and isotopes : including data, instrumentation and methods for use in agriculture, industry and medicine.

[5]  Shuang Qiao,et al.  Digital neutron image enhancement based on total variation-based ℓ0 minimization , 2016 .

[6]  The neutron tomography facility of IPEN-CNEN/SP and its potential to investigate ceramic objects from the Brazilian cultural heritage. , 2013, Applied radiation and isotopes : including data, instrumentation and methods for use in agriculture, industry and medicine.

[7]  Salim J. Attia,et al.  Enhancement of Chest X-ray Images for Diagnosis Purposes , 2016 .

[8]  V. Luzin,et al.  Neutron tomographic analysis: Material characterization of silver and electrum coins from the 6th and 5th centuries BCE , 2016 .

[9]  A. Khalfallah,et al.  Neutron tomography simulation by MAVRIC/Monaco code. , 2018, Applied radiation and isotopes : including data, instrumentation and methods for use in agriculture, industry and medicine.

[11]  M. R. Kiser,et al.  Neutron Stimulated Emission Computed Tomography for Diagnosis of Breast Cancer , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science.

[12]  Hong Jiang,et al.  Face recognition based on DWT/DCT and SVM , 2010, 2010 International Conference on Computer Application and System Modeling (ICCASM 2010).

[13]  Chad L. Pope,et al.  Matlab enhanced multi-threaded tomography optimization sequence (MEMTOS) , 2016 .

[14]  Burkhard Schillinger,et al.  The Early Stage of Neutron Tomography for Cultural Heritage Study in Thailand , 2017 .