Welding defect detection based on local image enhancement

Welding defect detection in a radiographic image is an important topic in the field of industrial non‐destructive testing. To improve the accuracy of welding defect segmentation, a local image enhancement approach is proposed. In this algorithm, the requirement of contrast enhancement is considered when extracting the weld seam and segmenting the weld defect. The whole defect detection is conducted by three procedures: image enhancement, welding seam extraction, and defect segmentation. Firstly, a method for determining the Localised Pixel Inhomogeneity Factor (LPIF) is proposed. Then, based on the results of LPIF, the Otsu method is applied to segment the welding seam and defects are, identified by region growing algorithm. The authors compared LPIF with histogram equalisation, adaptive histogram equalisation, and contrast‐limited adaptive histogram equalisation algorithms and assessed its performance by using indicators such as image contrast, image definition, and edge intensity. Moreover, the authors compared the segmentation results of the enhanced defect images with the original image to further study the method's effect on weld defect segmentation. More than 70 images containing various types of defects are tested. The experimental results demonstrate that the quality of enhanced defect images is improved significantly, and has a high relative segmentation accuracy of more than 92%.