TY - GEN A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Kästner, L. A1 - Hauffen, Jan Christian A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Photothermal-SR-Net: A Customized Deep Unfolding Neural Network for Photothermal Super Resolution Imaging N2 - This paper presents deep unfolding neural networks to handle inverse problems in photothermal radiometry enabling super resolution (SR) imaging. Photothermal imaging is a well-known technique in active thermography for nondestructive inspection of defects in materials such as metals or composites. A grand challenge of active thermography is to overcome the spatial resolution limitation imposed by heat diffusion in order to accurately resolve each defect. The photothermal SR approach enables to extract high-frequency spatial components based on the deconvolution with the thermal point spread function. However, stable deconvolution can only be achieved by using the sparse structure of defect patterns, which often requires tedious, hand-crafted tuning of hyperparameters and results in computationally intensive algorithms. On this account, Photothermal-SR-Net is proposed in this paper, which performs deconvolution by deep unfolding considering the underlying physics. This enables to super resolve 2D thermal images for nondestructive testing with a substantially improved convergence rate. Since defects appear sparsely in materials, Photothermal-SR-Net applies trained blocksparsity thresholding to the acquired thermal images in each convolutional layer. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated and discussed using various deep unfolding and thresholding approaches applied to 2D thermal images. Subsequently, studies are conducted on how to increase the reconstruction quality and the computational performance of Photothermal-SR-Net is evaluated. Thereby, it was found that the computing time for creating high-resolution images could be significantly reduced without decreasing the reconstruction quality by using pixel binning as a preprocessing step. KW - Photothermal super resolution KW - Nondestructive testing KW - Deep unfolding KW - Deep learning KW - Deep imaging KW - Physics-based deep learning KW - Laser thermography KW - Elastic net KW - Iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithm PY - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-525371 UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.10563 SN - 2331-8422 SP - 1 EP - 10 PB - Cornell University CY - Ithaca, NY AN - OPUS4-52537 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Ziegler, Mathias A1 - Thiel, Erik A1 - Burgholzer, P. A1 - Berer, T. A1 - Gruber, J. A1 - Mayr, G. A1 - Hendorfer, G. T1 - Thermographic super resolution using structured 1D laser illumination and joint sparsity N2 - Thermographic NDE is based on the interaction of thermal waves with inhomogeneities. These inhomogeneities are related to sample geometry or material composition. Although thermography is suitable for a wide range of inhomogeneities and materials, the fundamental limitation is the diffusive nature of thermal waves and the need to measure their effect radiometrically at the sample surface only. The propagation of the thermal waves from the heat source to the inhomogeneity and to the detection surface results in a degradation in the spatial resolution of the technique. A new concerted ansatz based on a spatially structured heating and a joint sparsity of the signal ensemble allows an improved reconstruction of inhomogeneities. As a first step to establish an improved thermographic NDE method, an experimental setup was built based on structured 1D illumination using a flash lamp behind a mechanical aperture. As a follow-up to this approach, we now use direct structured illumination using a 1D laser array. The individual emitter cells are driven by a random binary pattern and additionally shifted by fractions of the cell period. The repeated measurement of these different configurations with simultaneously constant inhomogeneity allows for a reconstruction that makes use of joint sparsity. With analytical-numerical modelling or numerical FEM simulations, we study the influence of the parameters on the result of non-linear reconstruction. For example, the influence of the illumination pattern as a variable heat flux density and Neumann boundary condition for convolution with the constant Green's function can be studied. These studies can be used to derive optimal conditions for a measurement technique. T2 - 62. International School of Quantum Electronics die Tagung “Progress in Photoacoustic & Photothermal Phenomena" CY - Erice, Italy DA - 06.09.2018 KW - Super resolution KW - Virtual wave KW - Laser thermography KW - 1d laser KW - Joint sparsity KW - Laser array KW - VCSEL array KW - High-power laser PY - 2018 AN - OPUS4-46180 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Thiel, Erik A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Thermal wave field engineering using structured 1D laser illumination N2 - Thermal waves are solutions of the heat diffusion equation for periodic boundary conditions and can be seen analogously to strongly damped waves. Although the underlying differential equation differs from the wave equation, the essential property for analogy between both equations is linearity such that superposition applies. This linearity is maintained even after a linear transformation, such as the Fourier transform from time to frequency domain. It follows that the temporal superposition principle is already used in active thermography, e.g. in pulsed thermography, as a superposition of many individual frequencies. However, the systematic spatial superposition has not yet been fully exploited, mainly due to a lack of suitable energy sources. As a first step, we are investigating how thermal wave fields of arbitrary space-time structures can be engineered using structured laser illumination. The proof of principle was shown using a laser coupled projector. Unfortunately, the available optical output power was limited due to the thermal stress limit of the device. That is why we are working towards a more sophisticated moving 1D array of high-power diode lasers. We characterized the novel light source and believe that apart from the benefit of spatial and temporal illumination it can combine the temporal regimes of impulse and lock-in thermography. In a second step, we investigate moving and oscillating line sources with different line shapes. We use a Green’s Function ansatz to analytically model the thermal wave propagation of structured 1D laser illumination in isotropic materials. Furthermore, we show some methods how they can be implemented. With this technique, we were able to accelerate our detection method firstly presented in for vertical narrow defects by factor three. Generally, we believe that this technique opens up similar opportunities than in other NDE methods. High-resolution ultrasound, for example, is also based on the superposition of single emitters and a recent concept suggests an option to deal with the diffusion wave character of the thermal waves. T2 - 62. International School of Quantum Electronics die Tagung “Progress in Photoacoustic & Photothermal Phenomena” CY - Erice, Italy DA - 06.09.2018 KW - Thermal wave KW - Thermal wave field KW - Thermal engineering KW - Structured laser illumination KW - 1d laser KW - Laser array KW - Laser thermography PY - 2018 AN - OPUS4-46193 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Ziegler, Mathias A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Thiel, Erik A1 - Krankenhagen, Rainer A1 - Maierhofer, Christiane T1 - Benefits & peculiarities of using highpower lasers for lock-in thermography N2 - Optical lock-in thermography is a completely contactless and very sensitive NDE technique. As an optical source of energy, incandescent (i.e. halogen) lamps are most commonly used because they are relatively inexpensive, do not need any work safety measures and offer high irradiances at the test site. However, they are strongly restricted by their low modulation bandwidth with a maximum modulation frequency of only about 1 Hz. The use of high-power kilowatt-class laser sources, e.g. diode laser arrays, pushes this constraint beyond 100 Hz. This allows for the exploration of the near-surface region of metals and layer systems with better and more accurate penetration depth and depth resolution. Moreover, these lasers are virtually free of any additional thermal radiation that could interfere with the “true” thermal response emitted from the heated sample. In turn, they can be easily used in a one-sided test configuration. Altogether using lasers considerably increases the application range of lock-in thermography, since especially for metals with a high reflectance and high thermal diffusivity a high irradiance is vitally important to allow for lock-in testing [1, 2]. We report on the mentioned benefits of using such high-power lasers and analyze the range of materials to be tested using lock-in thermography in dependence on the laser irradiance, the modulation frequency, the infrared camera as well as the optical and thermal material parameters. In this context, we also address a number of systematic errors caused by the use of ideal and non-ideal heat sources. For example, the measured phase angle in lock-in thermography depends on the irradiance and the modulation bandwidth of the source. This in turn has a decisive influence on the uncertainty in the quantification of, e.g. layer thicknesses. T2 - INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, 62nd Course, Progress in Photoacoustic & Photothermal Phenomena CY - Erice, Italy DA - 06.09.2018 KW - Thermography KW - Laser thermography KW - Lock-in thermography KW - NDT PY - 2018 AN - OPUS4-46282 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Ziegler, Mathias A1 - Thiel, Erik A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Karagianni, Christina A1 - Burgholzer, P. A1 - Mayr, G. A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. 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 - 46th Annual Review of Profress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation CY - Portland, OR, USA DA - 14.07.2019 KW - Super resolution KW - Virtual wave KW - Laser thermography KW - 1d laser KW - Joint sparsity KW - Laser array KW - VCSEL array KW - High-power laser PY - 2019 AN - OPUS4-48591 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Ziegler, Mathias A1 - Thiel, Erik A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Karagianni, Christina A1 - Burgholzer, P. A1 - Mayr, G. A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. T1 - A comparison of different techniques for photothermal super resolution image reconstruction N2 - The separation of two closely located 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 an improved reconstruction of closely located defects. This new technique has also been studied using 1D laser arrays in active thermography. The post-processing can be roughly described by two steps: 1. Finding a sparse basis representation using a reconstruction algorithm such as the Fourier transform, 2. Application of an iterative joint sparsity (IJOSP) method to the firstly reconstructed data. For this reason, different methods in post-processing can be compared using the same measured data set. The focus in this work was the variation of reconstruction algorithms in step 1 and its influence on the results from step 2. More precise, the measured thermal waves can be transformed to virtual (ultrasound) waves that can be processed by applying ultrasound reconstruction algorithms and finally the super resolution algorithm. Otherwise, it is also possible to make use of a Fourier transform with a subsequent super resolution routine. These super resolution thermographic image reconstruction techniques in post-processing are discussed and evaluated regarding performance, accuracy and repeatability. T2 - 20-th International Conference on Photoacoustic and Photothermal Phenomena CY - Moscow, Russia DA - 07.07.2019 KW - Super resolution KW - Virtual wave KW - Laser thermography KW - 1d laser KW - Joint sparsity KW - Laser array KW - VCSEL array KW - High-power laser KW - Fourier transform KW - Dimension reduction PY - 2019 AN - OPUS4-48592 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Ziegler, Mathias A1 - Thiel, Erik A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Karagianni, Christina A1 - Burgholzer, P. A1 - Mayr, G. A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. T1 - Photothermal super resolution imaging: a comparison of different reconstruction techniques N2 - The diffusive nature of heat propagation complicates the separation of two closely spaced defects. This results in a fundamental limitation in spatial resolution. Therefore, super resolution (SR) image reconstruction can be used. SR processing techniques 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 SR algorithms such as the iterative joint sparsity (IJOSP) algorithm, to our processed measurement data. Two different data processing strategies are evaluated and discussed regarding their influence on the reconstruction goodness as well as their complexity. Moreover, the degradation of the SR reconstruction by the choice of regularization parameters in data processing is discussed. The application of both SR techniques that are evaluated in this paper results in a spatial resolution enhancement of approximately a factor of four which leads to a better separation of two closely spaced defects. The fundamental difference between both SR techniques is their complexity. T2 - 46th Annual Review of Profress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation CY - Portland, OR, USA DA - 14.07.2019 KW - Super resolution KW - Virtual wave KW - Laser thermography KW - 1d laser KW - Joint sparsity KW - Laser array KW - VCSEL array KW - High-power laser KW - Fourier transform KW - Dimension reduction PY - 2019 AN - OPUS4-48579 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Ziegler, Mathias A1 - Thiel, Erik A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Karagianni, Christina A1 - Burgholzer, P. A1 - Mayr, G. A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. T1 - Thermal Super Resolution Image Reconstruction Using Structured Laser Heating N2 - The separation of two closely located 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. The measured thermal waves can be transformed to virtual (ultrasound) waves that can be processed by applying ultrasound reconstruction algorithms and finally the super resolution algorithm. Otherwise, it is also possible to make use of a Fourier transform with a subsequent super resolution routine. These super resolution thermographic image reconstruction techniques in post-processing are discussed and evaluated regarding performance, accuracy and repeatability. T2 - 7th Autumn School METTI (Thermal Measurements and Inverse Techniques) CY - Porquerolles Island, Hyères, France DA - 29.09.2019 KW - Super resolution KW - Virtual wave KW - Laser thermography KW - VCSEL array KW - Joint sparsity KW - Compressed sensing PY - 2019 AN - OPUS4-49881 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Lecompagnon, Julien A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Burgholzer, Peter A1 - Jung, Peter A1 - Caire, Giuseppe A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Laser excited super resolution thermal imaging for nondestructive testing N2 - The work to be presented focuses on our most recent studies to laser excited super resolution (SR) thermography. The goal of nondestructive testing with SR is to facilitate the separation of closely spaced defects. Photothermal SR can be realized by performing structured illumination measurements in com-bination with the use of deconvolution algorithms in post-processing. We explain that stepwise as well as continuous scanning techniques are applicable to generate structured illumination measurements. Finally, we discuss the effect of experimental parameters and image processing techniques to find the optimal SR technique which leads to the highest reconstruction quality within laser thermography. T2 - Sensor and Measurement Science International Conference SMSI 2021 CY - Online meeting DA - 03.05.2021 KW - Super resolution KW - Laser thermography KW - Nondestructive testing KW - Laser scanning KW - Photothermal imaging PY - 2021 AN - OPUS4-52781 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Ziegler, Mathias A1 - Thiel, Erik A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Karagianni, Christina A1 - Burgholzer, P. A1 - Mayr, G. A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. T1 - Thermographic super resolution imaging using structured 1D laser illumination N2 - Thermographic nondestructive evaluation (NDE) is based on the interaction of thermal waves with inhomogeneities. These inhomogeneities are related to sample geometry or material composition. Although thermography is suitable for a wide range of inhomogeneities and materials, the fundamental limitation is the diffusive nature of thermal waves and the need to measure their effect radiometrically at the sample surface only. The propagation of the thermal waves from the heat source to the inhomogeneity and to the detection surface results in a degradation in the spatial resolution of the technique. A new concerted ansatz based on a spatially structured heating and a joint sparsity of the signal ensemble allows an improved reconstruction of inhomogeneities. As a first step to establish an improved thermographic NDE method, an experimental setup was built based on structured 1D illumination using a flash lamp behind a mechanical aperture. As a follow-up to this approach, we now use direct structured illumination using a 1D laser array. The individual emitter cells are driven by a pseudo-random binary pattern and are additionally shifted by fractions of the cell period. The repeated measurement of these different configurations enables to illuminate each spot of the sample surface in lateral direction. This allows for a reconstruction that makes use of joint sparsity. The measured data set is processed using super resolution image reconstruction algorithms such as the iterative joint sparsity (IJOSP) algorithm. Using this reconstruction technique and 150 different illumination patterns results in a spatial resolution enhancement of approximately a factor of four compared to the resolution of 5.9 mm for homogenously illuminated thermographic reconstruction. Further, new data processing techniques have been studied before applying the IJOSP algorithm that are more performant or less prone to errors regarding image reconstruction. The choice of regularization parameters in data processing as well as experimental parameters such as the illumination pattern as a variable heat flux density (i.e., the Neumann boundary condition for convolution with the constant Green's function) have a big influence on the reconstruction goodness. With analytical-numerical modelling and numerical FEM simulations, we studied the influence of the experimental parameters on the result of the non-linear IJOSP reconstruction. This has also been investigated experimentally e.g. using different laser line widths or more measurements per position. These studies are used to derive optimal conditions for a certain measurement image reconstruction technique. T2 - 20-th International Conference on Photoacoustic and Photothermal Phenomena CY - Moscow, Russia DA - 07.07.2019 KW - Super resolution KW - Virtual wave KW - Laser thermography KW - 1d laser KW - Joint sparsity KW - Laser array KW - VCSEL array KW - High-power laser PY - 2019 AN - OPUS4-48578 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -