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June 2015
AFRICAN FUSION
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Once digitised, all of the key advantages of digital systems apply:
the brightness and contrast can be very easily adjusted to suit
different areas of the image; magnification is easy; the image can be
enhanced and processed; measurements can be applied and used in
calculations and statistics; and annotations and stamps (metadata)
can easily be incorporated directly into the image file.
ibility protocol for the medical imaging
profession. “But for the first five years,
the focus was on the choice between CR
or DR technology and the bridge to film
was seen as less important. Today all of
the major medical digital imaging pro-
viders also provide scanners to convert
existingX-rays into theequivalent DICOM
digital format,”
DICOM was the forefather of the
file format chosen for industrial NDT
systems, DICONDE (Digital Imaging and
Communications for Non-Destructive
Evaluation) a standard established by
the ASTM (American Society for Testing
and Materials).
Describing how DICONDE is used,
Beaugrand says that Larivière is cur-
rently digitising all of the historic film
for one of its large pipeline construction
clients. Using a service vehicle fitted
with its VIDAR NDTPRO industrial film
digitiser, inspection personnel go into
the field and systematically digitise the
film archives. “This solution fixes all
compatibility problems between the
technologies and enables compatible
workflows to be employed for film-,
CR- or DR-based images,” he assures.
“It enables images produced from film
and digital devices to
be treated identically
and compared side by
side, which is an integral
step in enabling digital
technology to be fully
adopted,” he says, before
adding, “Can you imag-
ine how many rows of
boxes and filing cabinets
can be emptied by digi-
tising all the films being
stored?”
As well as digitising
the film image, the DI-
CONDE standard is also
able to capture the meta-
data associatedwith an image. Reports,
measurements andall of the advantages
of digital systems can also, therefore, be
applied. “DICONDE and associated film
digitisation solutions ensure compat-
ibility between the existing NDT world
and all future digital systems. In com-
patibility tests between seven leading
equipmentmanufacturers, imageswere
found to be 100% compatible with all
brands of digital imaging systems and
software,” he assures.
Describing the specific advantages
of the VIDARNDT PRO, he says that
this system offers the NDT industry “a
product that not only carries a smaller
price tag, but is lighter and has a smaller
footprint.” The digitiser can handle
film as narrow as 2.36̋
wide and up to
51̋
long. It also features VIDAR’s high-
definition CCD (HD-CCD™) solid-state
technology, aswell as its ADC (automatic
digitiser calibration) mechanism, which
virtually eliminates variation in image
quality and ensures excellent greyscale
reproduction.