TY - JOUR A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Thummerer, G. A1 - Breitwieser, S. A1 - Mayr, G. A1 - Lecompagnon, Julien A1 - Burgholzer, P. A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Multi-dimensional reconstruction of internal defects in additively manufactured steel using photothermal super resolution combined with virtual wave based image processing N2 - We combine three different approaches to greatly enhance the defect reconstruction ability of active thermographic testing. As experimental approach, laser-based structured illumination is performed in a step-wise manner. As an intermediate signal processing step, the virtual wave concept is used in order to effectively convert the notoriously difficult to solve diffusion-based inverse problem into a somewhat milder wavebased inverse problem. As a final step, a compressed-sensing based optimization procedure is applied which efficiently solves the inverse problem by making advantage of the joint sparsity of multiple blind measurements. To evaluate our proposed processing technique, we investigate an additively manufactured stainless steel sample with eight internal defects. The concerted super resolution approach is compared to conventional thermographic reconstruction techniques and shows an at least four times better spatial resolution. KW - Active thermography KW - Additive manufacturing KW - Stainless steel KW - ADMM KW - Block regularization KW - Internal defects KW - Joint sparsity KW - Laser excitation KW - Multi-dimensional reconstruction KW - Photothermal super resolution KW - Virtual waves PY - 2021 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-525330 DO - https://doi.org/10.1109/tii.2021.3054411 SN - 1551-3203 SN - 1941-0050 VL - 17 IS - 11 SP - 7368 EP - 7378 PB - IEEE CY - New York, NY AN - OPUS4-52533 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Burgholzer, P. A1 - Mayr, G. A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Photothermal super resolution imaging: A comparison of different thermographic reconstruction techniques N2 - This paper presents different super resolution reconstruction techniques to overcome the spatial resolution limits in thermography. Pseudo-random blind structured illumination from a onedimensional laser array is used as heat source for super resolution thermography. Pulsed thermography measurements using an infrared camera with a high frame rate sampling lead to a huge amount of data. To handle this large data set, thermographic reconstruction techniques are an essential step of the overall reconstruction process. Four different thermographic reconstruction techniques are analyzed based on the Fourier transform amplitude, principal component analysis, virtual wave reconstruction and the maximum thermogram. The application of those methods results in a sparse basis representation of the measured data and serves as input for a compressed sensing based algorithm called iterative joint sparsity (IJOSP). Since the thermographic reconstruction techniques have a high influence on the result of the IJOSP algorithm, this paper Highlights their Advantages and disadvantages. KW - Super resolution KW - Compressed sensing KW - Laser thermography KW - Virtual wave KW - Defect reconstruction PY - 2020 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ndteint.2020.102228 VL - 111 SP - 2228 PB - Elsevier Ltd. CY - Netherlands AN - OPUS4-50419 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Thiel, Erik A1 - Karagianni, Christina A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Burgholzer, P. A1 - Mayr, G. A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Photothermal super resolution image reconstruction using structured 1D laser illumination N2 - The separation of two closely spaced defects in fields of Thermographic NDE is very challenging. The diffusive nature of thermal waves leads to a fundamental limitation in spatial resolution. Therefore, super resolution image reconstruction can be used. A new concerted ansatz based on spatially structured heating and joint sparsity of the signal ensemble allows for an improved reconstruction of closely spaced defects. This new technique has been studied using a 1D laser array with randomly chosen illumination pattern. This paper presents the results after applying super resolution algorithms, such as the iterative joint sparsity (IJOSP) algorithm, to our processed measurement data. Different data processing techniques before applying the IJOSP algorithm as well as the influence of regularization parameters in the data processing techniques are discussed. Moreover, the degradation of super resolution reconstruction goodness by the choice of experimental parameters such as laser line width or number of measurements is shown. The application of the super resolution results in a spatial resolution enhancement of approximately a factor of four which leads to a better separation of two closely spaced defects. T2 - Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation Conference 2019 CY - Portland, OR, USA DA - 14.07.2019 KW - Super resolution KW - Photothermal KW - Thermography KW - Laser PY - 2019 SP - Paper 8593, 1 PB - ASME AN - OPUS4-50924 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Burgholzer, P. A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Super resolution laser line scanning thermography N2 - In this paper we propose super resolution measurement and post-processing strategies that can be applied in thermography using laser line scanning. The implementation of these techniques facilitates the separation of two closely spaced defects and avoids the expected deterioration of spatial resolution due to heat diffusion. The experimental studies were performed using a high-power laser as heat source in combination with pulsed thermography measurements (step scanning) or with continuous heating measurements (continuous scanning). Our work shows that laser line step scanning as well as continuous scanning both can be used within our developed super resolution (SR) techniques. Our SR techniques make use of a compressed sensing based algorithm in post- processing, the so-called iterative joint sparsity (IJOSP) approach. The IJOSP method benefits from both - the sparse nature of defects in space as well as from the similarity of each measurement. In addition, we show further methods to improve the reconstruction quality e.g. by simple manipulations in thermal image processing such as by considering the effect of the scanning motion or by using different optimization algorithms within the IJOSP approach. These super resolution image processing methods are discussed so that the advantages and disadvantages of each method can be extracted. Our contribution thus provides new approaches for the implementation of super resolution techniques in laser line scanning thermography and informs about which experimental and post-processing parameters should be chosen to better separate two closely spaced defects. KW - Super resolution KW - Laser thermography KW - Compressed sensing KW - Laser scanning KW - Joint sparsity PY - 2020 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-509796 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optlaseng.2020.106279 SN - 0143-8166 VL - 134 SP - 106279 PB - Elsevier Ltd. AN - OPUS4-50979 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Lecompagnon, Julien A1 - Hassenstein, Christian A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - New techniques in super resolution photothermal imaging for nondestructive testing N2 - In this work we focus on our most recent studies to super resolution (SR) laser thermography. The goal of SR nondestructive testing methods is to facilitate the separation of closely spaced defects. We explain how to combine laser scanning with SR techniques. It can be shown that stepwise as well as continuous scanning techniques are applicable. Finally, we discuss the effect of experimental parameters and im-age processing techniques to find the optimal SR technique which leads to the highest reconstruction quality within laser thermography. T2 - SMSI 2020 Conference CY - Online meeting DA - 22.06.2020 KW - Super resolution KW - Laser thermography KW - Nondestructive testing KW - Laser scanning KW - Photothermal imaging PY - 2020 DO - https://doi.org/10.5162/SMSI2020/C4.1 SP - 169 EP - 170 AN - OPUS4-50895 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Lecompagnon, Julien A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Burgholzer, P. A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Laser excited super resolution thermal imaging for nondestructive inspection of internal defects N2 - A photothermal super resolution technique is proposed for an improved inspection of internal defects. To evaluate the potential of the laser-based thermographic technique, an additively manufactured stainless steel specimen with closely spaced internal cavities is used. Four different experimental configurations in transmission, reflection, stepwise and continuous scanning are investigated. The applied image post-processing method is based on compressed sensing and makes use of the block sparsity from multiple measurement events. This concerted approach of experimental measurement strategy and numerical optimization enables the resolution of internal defects and outperforms conventional thermographic inspection techniques. KW - Super Resolution KW - Laser Thermography KW - Non Destructive Testing KW - Comressed Sensing KW - Inverse Problem KW - Thermography PY - 2020 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-519016 DO - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-77979-y VL - 10 IS - 1 SP - 22357 PB - Springer Nature AN - OPUS4-51901 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - INPR A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Lecompagnon, Julien A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Burgholzer, P. A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. T1 - Laser excited super resolution thermal imaging for nondestructive inspection of internal defects N2 - A photothermal super resolution technique is proposed for an improved inspection of internal defects. To evaluate the potential of the laser-based thermographic technique, an additively manufactured stainless steel specimen with closely spaced internal cavities is used. Four different experimental configurations in transmission, reflection, stepwise and continuous scanning are investigated. The applied image post-processing method is based on compressed sensing and makes use of the block sparsity from multiple measurement events. This concerted approach of experimental measurement strategy and numerical optimization enables the resolution of internal defects and outperforms conventional thermographic inspection techniques. KW - Super resolution KW - Photothermal KW - Imaging KW - Compressed sensing KW - Internal defects KW - Nondestructive testing PY - 2020 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-518866 DO - https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2007.03341 SN - 2331-8422 SP - 1 EP - 9 PB - Cornell University CY - Ithaca, NY AN - OPUS4-51886 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kästner, L. A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Jonietz, Florian A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias A1 - Lambrecht, J. T1 - Classification of Spot-Welded Joints in Laser Thermography Data Using Convolutional Neural Networks N2 - Spot welding is a crucial process step in various industries. However, classification of spot welding quality is still a tedious process due to the complexity and sensitivity of the test material, which drain conventional approaches to its limits. In this article, we propose an approach for quality inspection of spot weldings using images from laser thermography data. We propose data preparation approaches based on the underlying physics of spot-welded joints, heated with pulsed laser thermography by analyzing the intensity over time and derive dedicated data filters to generate training datasets. Subsequently, we utilize convolutional neural networks to classify weld quality and compare the performance of different models against each other. We achieve competitive results in terms of classifying the different welding quality classes compared to traditional approaches, reaching an accuracy of more than 95 percent. Finally, we explore the effect of different augmentation methods. KW - Active thermal imaging KW - Laser thermography KW - Spot-welded joints KW - Convolutional neural network KW - Classification KW - Data processing PY - 2021 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-524216 DO - https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3063672 VL - 9 SP - 48303 EP - 48312 AN - OPUS4-52421 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - INPR A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Hauffen, Jan Christian A1 - Kästner, L. A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Learned block iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithm for photothermal super resolution imaging N2 - Block-sparse regularization is already well-known in active thermal imaging and is used for multiple measurement based inverse problems. The main bottleneck of this method is the choice of regularization parameters which differs for each experiment. To avoid time-consuming manually selected regularization parameters, we propose a learned block-sparse optimization approach using an iterative algorithm unfolded into a deep neural network. More precisely, we show the benefits of using a learned block iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithm that is able to learn the choice of regularization parameters. In addition, this algorithm enables the determination of a suitable weight matrix to solve the underlying inverse problem. Therefore, in this paper we present the algorithm and compare it with state of the art block iterative shrinkage thresholding using synthetically generated test data and experimental test data from active thermography for defect reconstruction. Our results show that the use of the learned block-sparse optimization approach provides smaller normalized mean square errors for a small fixed number of iterations than without learning. Thus, this new approach allows to improve the convergence speed and only needs a few iterations to generate accurate defect reconstruction in photothermal super resolution imaging. KW - Iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithm KW - Neural network KW - Deep learning KW - Active thermography KW - Photothermal super resolution PY - 2020 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-525364 DO - https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2012.03547 SN - 2331-8422 SP - 1 EP - 11 PB - Cornell University CY - Ithaca, NY AN - OPUS4-52536 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hauffen, J. C. A1 - Kästner, L. A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Learned block iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithm for photothermal super resolution imaging N2 - Block-sparse regularization is already well known in active thermal imaging and is used for multiple-measurement-based inverse problems. The main bottleneck of this method is the choice of regularization parameters which differs for each experiment. We show the benefits of using a learned block iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithm (LBISTA) that is able to learn the choice of regularization parameters, without the need to manually select them. In addition, LBISTA enables the determination of a suitable weight matrix to solve the underlying inverse problem. Therefore, in this paper we present LBISTA and compare it with state-of-the-art block iterative shrinkage thresholding using synthetically generated and experimental test data from active thermography for defect reconstruction. Our results show that the use of the learned block-sparse optimization approach provides smaller normalized mean square errors for a small fixed number of iterations. Thus, this allows us to improve the convergence speed and only needs a few iterations to generate accurate defect reconstruction in photothermal super-resolution imaging. KW - Thermography KW - Laser KW - Machine learning KW - Optimization KW - Non-destructive testing KW - NDT KW - Neural network KW - Defect reconstruction KW - Block-sparsity KW - Active thermal imaging KW - Regularization KW - Laser thermography PY - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-554598 DO - https://doi.org/10.3390/s22155533 SN - 1424-8220 VL - 22 IS - 15 SP - 1 EP - 15 PB - MDPI CY - Basel AN - OPUS4-55459 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -