Fraunhofer Institute EZRT is known for high quality research on the area of computed tomography (CT). Fraunhofer also assembles digital 3D X-ray units for special inspection purposes. Many industrial fields are requiring more advanced methods for quality inspections and 3D X-ray is often the best applicable NDT method. 3D reconstruction reveals accurate information from the internal structures of measured objects and the same data can be used for metrological purposes, too. For industry this is very efficient, since now one method solves many measurement challenges.

Fraunhofer has launched project called ExaCTMetall that is concentrating on industrial CT inspections. One of the key research topics is to how to detect possible defects inside components consisting of predefined materials and compare reconstructions to model data.

Eigenor has been in reconstruction software business over 10 years and has vast experience about different reconstruction method programming. Discrete CT allows user to define the values appearing in reconstruction results beforehand and thus the results represent only known materials of the measured object. The reconstruction is limited in certain HU-values showing distinctive results, which improve the possibilities for post-processing and automatic defect recognition.

Fraunhofer and Eigenor signed co-operation agreement during Q1 of 2015 for development of CT methods. Fraunhofer will be responsible for the X-ray hardware and Eigenor will provide the reconstruction software. One of the main goals is to compare different methods for industry and aim for breakthroughs in the field of discrete CT. Developing the discrete methods especially for commercial use to serve the needs of different industrial inspections is important.