IR self-referencing thermography for detection of in-depth defects

Infrared self-referencing thermography is applied here and its importance is illustrated. This technique will eliminate the need for prior knowledge of a defect free area to allow automatic identification of defects from thermograms. The basis of this technique is to divide the thermogram image into small, localized neighborhoods using the assumption that these neighborhoods exhibit the non-defective behavior for the thermal contrast computation. This technique can be utilized in both static (hot spot detection) and dynamic (infrared tomography) cases. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.