Uncertainty in CT Metrology: Visualizations for Exploration and Analysis of Geometric Tolerances

Abstract

Industrial 3D X-ray computed tomography (3DXCT) is increasingly applied as a technique for metrology applications. In contrast to comventional metrology tools such as coordinate measurement machines (CMMs). 3DXCT only estimates the exact position of the specimen´s surface and is subjected to a specific set of artifact types. These factors result in uncertainty that is present in the data. Previous work by Amirkhanov et. al [2] presented a tool prototype that is taking such uncertainty into account when measuring geometric tolerances such as straightness, circularity, or flatness. In this paper we extend the previous work with two more geometric tolerance types: cylindricity and angularity. We provide methods and tools for visualization, inspection, and analysis of these tolerances. For the cylindricity tolerance we employ neighboring profiles visualization, box-plot overview, and interactive 3D view. We evaluate applicability and usefulness our methods on a new TP03 data set, and present results and new potential use cases.