Thermography pattern analysis and separation

Analysis of thermography spatial-transient patterns has considerable potential to enable automatic identification and quantification of defects in non-destructive testing and evaluation. This Letter proposes a non-negative pattern separation model for eddy current pulsed thermography to automatically extract important spatial and time patterns according to the transient thermal sequences without any pre-training or prior knowledge. In particular, the method is scale-invariant, such that large differences in surface emissivity, hot spots, and cool areas with dynamic range of thermal contrast can be extracted. Finally, an artificial slot in a steel sample with shining, black strip on the surface is tested to validate the proposed method.