title: Image enhancement for on-site X-ray nondestructive inspection of reinforced concrete structures.
abstract: The use of portable and high-energy X-ray system can provide a very promising approach for on-site nondestructive inspection of inner steel reinforcement of concrete structures. However, the noise properties and contrast of the radiographic images for thick concrete structures do often not meet the demands. To enhance the images, we present a simple and effective method for noise reduction based on a combined curvelet-wavelet transform and local contrast enhancement based on neighborhood operation. To investigate the performance of this method for our X-ray system, we have performed several experiments with using simulated and experimental data. With comparing to other traditional methods, it shows that the proposed image enhancement method has a better performance and can significantly improve the inspection performance for reinforced concrete structures.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory for Strength and Vibration of Mechanical Structures, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.|School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Cuixiang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pei
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Wenjing
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Mitsuru
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ueaska
mesh_terms: D003252:Construction Materials / Q000032:analysis / Q000592:standards; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D013679:Technology, Radiologic / Q000379:methods*; D014965:X-Rays
keywords: Concrete structure; X-ray inspection; image processing; nondestructive testing