DIGITALdata

A Standard Practice
for Digital NDT Data
From Materials Evaluation, Vol. 68, No. 3, pp: 319–325.
Copyright © 2010 The American Society for Nondestructive Testing, Inc.

Exchange and
I
ndustry standards play a pivotal role in the advancement of science and
technology. Early manufacturing standards enabled large strides in the

Storage efficiency of producing everything from the automobile to aircraft

by Patrick Howard, Lloyd Arrowood, Matthias
Jobst and John Hansen
engines. Later the software industry realized the benefit by developing
widely reusable software modules and platform-independent programming
languages. Next, the information technology industry realized the potential of
standard formats for data exchange and storage. Data communication and
storage standards such as hypertext markup language (HTML), joint photo-
graphic experts group (JPEG) and the MPEG-1 audio layer 3 (MP3) have been
the driving force behind the explosion of the Internet, digital photography and
portable music players.
Just as data management is an integral part of digital photography, it is
equally important to nondestructive testing (NDT). Critical national and
commercial infrastructure requires long-term communication and storage
solutions for testing data. In the United States, nuclear power plants are
typically licensed for 40 years, but can obtain an operating extension for an
additional 20 years (Hewlett, 1992). Military and commercial aircraft lifespans
are established based on takeoff and landing cycles and can last over 20
years; many military aircraft are more than 30 years old. The average age of
the B-52 bomber and the KC-135 tanker, which both the US Air Force and US
Navy rely on to refuel other planes, is over 45 years (Greenburg, 2008). Over

MARCH 2010 • MATERIALS EVALUATION 319

ME FEATURE w
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such long periods of time, testing equipment is
replaced with newer models and equipment vendors
go out of business. The underlying need to access the
data acquired with that equipment remains, though.
There is an opportunity to promote interoperability as
testing equipment is modernized to establish long-
term data access in the NDT industry.
Testing Data Storage
Historically, the NDT industry has relied on proprietary
formats to store testing data. With the volume of data
collected increasing due to the change from traditional
data collection methods, such as film in X-ray and
paper charts in eddy current, to digital storage, there
is an increased need for an open, industry-wide
standard for data communication and storage.
There have been previous attempts to develop
an NDT data communication and storage standard.
In the early 1990s, the Trappist Project was part of
the EU’s RACE II communication technology program
that demonstrated a distributed 3D NDT test system
for remote data assessment (McNab and Cornwell,
1994). With ten participant organizations repre-
senting end-users and NDT institutes, this project
was followed by a standardization project by the
European Committee for Standardization, leading to
a technical report being published (CEN, 2000).
Recently, papers discussing the use of extensible
markup language (XML), a human readable data
format widely used in information systems for
sharing structured data to make data exchange
Attribute
Information
Module Attribute
I-n
Information Attribute
Object I-n
Definition
(IOCD)
Attribute
Information
Module Attribute
I-n
Attribute
Figure 1. Information model hierarchy.
320 MATERIALS EVALUATION • MARCH 2010
possible, have been published (Jenkins et al., 2002;
Onoe and Gilbert, 2001). However, none of these
formats have seen widespread adoption.
DICOM
In the 1980s, the healthcare industry faced a similar
problem as manufacturers of medical imaging devices
utilized proprietary communication and data exchange
mechanisms similar to those found in the testing
equipment industry today (Oosterwijk, 2005). The
Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine
(DICOM) Committee started in 1983 as a joint effort
between manufacturers and users of radiological
imaging equipment to produce the ACR/NEMA 300-
1985 publication. This publication was revised and
called the DICOM standard version 3.0 in 1993. The
latest version of the standard is still designated 3.0,
although it has been regularly updated and extended.
Instead of using the version number the standard is
often referred to using the release year, as in “DICOM-
2008” (NEMA, 2008). Since 1993, DICOM has
achieved a near universal level of acceptance among
medical imaging equipment vendors and healthcare IT
organizations becoming the de facto standard in the
medical industry.
The DICOM standard is based on a detailed infor-
mation model designed to promote reuse and extensi-
bility (Oosterwijk, 2005). Near the top of the model
hierarchy, is the information object definition (IOD).
The IOD is designed to encapsulate a real-world data
set such as a digital X-ray image or ultrasound image.
The IOD is defined in terms of information modules.
Information modules hold organized groups of
metadata about the image. These metadata extend
beyond what is found in other image data formats
such as Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) or JPEG to
include information about the patient, test method,
test equipment and hospital. Information modules in
turn are composed of individual data elements called
attributes. Examples of attributes range from patient
name to transducer frequency to instrument serial
number. Information modules and attributes that are
similar across multiple imaging modalities are reused
so that they are only defined once in the standard.
Therefore, information modules may be used in more
than one IOD, and attributes may appear in more than
one information module. Figure 1 illustrates the
hierarchy of IODs with multiple information modules
consisting of multiple attributes.
DICONDE
Based on the success of the DICOM standard, a group of
experts in NDT began exploiting the similarities between
medical imaging equipment and industrial testing
the standard has undergone a series of
revisions to improve its usefulness
systems in the late 1990s. Working with ASTM
International, they developed the Digital Imaging and
Communications in Nondestructive Evaluation
(DICONDE) standard based on the DICOM standard. First
published in 2004 as ASTM E 2339: Standard Practice
for Digital Imaging and Communication in
Nondestructive Evaluation (ASTM, 2008a), the standard
has undergone a series of revisions to improve its
usefulness to the industry, but is still in its infancy.
Approach
The approach of the ASTM E07.11 subcommittee on
DICONDE has been to reuse DICOM IODs, information
modules and attributes where possible. For example,
the patient module has been redefined to be the
component module. Wherever possible, references to
the DICOM standard are used to minimize repetitious
information and the need to modify the ASTM
standard every time a change takes place in the
DICOM standard. The DICOM standard allows the
ASTM team the flexibility to both ignore elements of
the standard that do not apply to industrial imaging
and to create new information modules and attributes
where no reasonable medical equivalent exists.
Examples of DICONDE information modules are
component, component study and NDT equipment.
Examples of attributes are component name,
component identification and system serial number.
Advantages
In addition to being a storage standard, DICOM is also
a communications standard. As such, the archival data
file format found in Part 10 of the standard is only a
small part of DICOM. The healthcare standard
addresses the network transfer of data, querying
remote data archives, reporting, security, workflow
and image data display that are not found in other
data storage standards such as TIFF and JPEG. With
these features industrial users can put in place
features such as:
● remote image data review
● escalation workflows in case of indications
● viewing archived data exactly as the operator
viewed them for root cause investigations
● standardized electronic reporting for paperless
factories.
The DICOM committee is currently considering addi-
tional features for the standard such as XML support and
custom software application hosting (Prior et al., 2007;
You and Yao, 2005). In addition to these features, there
are a wide variety of DICOM compatible tools such as
picture archiving systems, printers, image review
software and open source software than can be easily
leveraged for use with DICONDE.
Recent Activity
Since the publication of E 2339 in 2004, the DICONDE
team has been focused on receiving feedback from
those implementing the standard and incorporating
suggested changes. The current version, E 2339-08, has
been updated to allow large-scale adoption of the
standard. Early adoption has been greatest in the area
of digital radiographic testing, where the similarities
between medical and industrial imaging are most
pronounced. In addition to radiography, DICONDE is
being used for ultrasonic, computed tomography, ther-
mography, visual and eddy current testing. To address
the needs of these different modalities, the DICONDE
subcommittee is working on draft standard practices to
support the data storage requirements of each of these
modalities. The original DICONDE standard practice
E 2339 will continue to exist and will specify data
storage requirements that apply to all NDT modalities.
Additional draft standard practices are in preparation to
address the specific needs of individual NDT modalities.
In late 2008, ASTM published E 2663: Standard Practice
for Digital Imaging and Communications in
Nondestructive Evaluation for Ultrasonic Test Methods
(DICONDE-UT) (ASTM, 2008b). This standard practice
addresses metadata needed to describe ultrasonic
testing processes that do not apply to other NDT modali-
ties. Similar documents are in the final stages of devel-
opment for digital radiography, computed tomography,
computed radiography and eddy current testing. The
subcommittee is also investigating methods for testing
the interoperability of different products on the market
following the DICONDE standard for data storage and
communication. As the adoption of DICONDE increases,
examples of using DICONDE in industrial settings are
becoming available. A few of these examples are
included below.
MARCH 2010 • MATERIALS EVALUATION 321
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Manufacturing Plant 1 Manufacturing Plant 2

DICONDE DICONDE DICONDE DICONDE DICONDE DICONDE

Data Acq. Data Acq. Data Acq. Data Acq. Data Acq. Data Acq.

DICONDE DICONDE DICONDE DICONDE DICONDE DICONDE

Workstation Workstation Workstation Workstation Workstation Workstation

Intranet

Manufacturing Plant 3 Engineering

DICONDE DICONDE DICONDE DICONDE DICONDE DICONDE

Data Acq. Data Acq. Data Acq. Workstation Workstation Workstation

DICONDE DICONDE DICONDE

Workstation Workstation Archive

Figure 2. Example of a DICONDE network.

Case Study: Remote Data Review
Radiographic testing is widely utilized in the
aerospace industry for the testing of both new and in-
service components. The testing of these components
occurs at manufacturing plants, in-service locations
and repair facilities worldwide. During the process of
testing these components, the need arises to have the
data reviewed by engineers or NDT experts not located
at the testing site. For film based radiographic testing,
the additional review process had a long cycle time.
Radiographic film images would need to be physically
shipped to the additional reviewers. This process
would end up taking days or, in some cases, weeks.
Digital radiographic processes using DICONDE make
this process more efficient.
Manufacturing Testing
A major aerospace OEM has been replacing film based
radiographic testing with digital radiographic testing
systems based on the DICONDE standard. Using this
approach, they have built a company-wide network of
digital radiography review workstations similar to the
one shown in Figure 2. Using this DICONDE network, the
testing site that has data that require additional review
is able to route those data over the network to the
desired reviewers. This routing can be done manually on
a case-by-case basis or can be set up as an automated
workflow after the initial person reviewing the image
makes a disposition. This dramatic decrease in disposi-
tion time compared to traditional radiographic testing
results in fewer parts being placed on hold awaiting the
results of the final disposition. This has had a positive
effect on inventory levels for the plants.
The network of DICONDE compliant systems also
allows NDT engineers located remotely to monitor the
new testing processes or process changes. After imple-
menting a new NDT process or a major change to an
NDT process, the results from the process are monitored
closely after implementation to ensure that the process
is performing normally in day-in/day-out operations.
Before DICONDE, this monitoring process would have
required additional trips by the engineer to the produc-
tion facility or personnel at the production facility to
package and send data back to the engineer’s location.
With the DICONDE network in place the monitoring
process is greatly simplified. The remote NDT engineer is
able to query the testing data from the new process and
retrieve the desired images to a DICONDE workstation
electronically. The engineer can do this daily, weekly or
at any predetermined monitoring interval.

322 MATERIALS EVALUATION • MARCH 2010

In-Service Testing
The Y-12 National Security Complex is one of several
facilities managed for the United States Department of
Energy that performs radiographic testing of nuclear
weapon components to ensure a safe and reliable
nuclear deterrent through assessment, surveillance,
refurbishment and dismantlement. There is a require-
ment to manage testing data for the life of a weapons
program, and there is a recognized need to adopt
common metadata and data exchange mechanisms.
Modernization efforts have transformed several testing
processes from film based to digital radiography.
Savings inherent in this conversion include lessened
film requirements, fewer chemicals and a reduction in
processing wastes by eliminating film for certain radi-
ographic processes such as optimization of radiographic
setup and examination of selected part streams. In
addition, the adoption of digital radiography for some
testing processes mitigates the potential loss of film
suppliers as the film market continues to shrink.
Radiographic technicians in multiple on-site radi-
ography facilities acquire radiographic imagery and
share it through local or wide area networks with
highly skilled inspectors who interpret the imagery
and document testing results using annotations.
Radiographic data residing on local workstations are
transmitted to centralized computer servers for long-
term retention and transmission to other US
Department of Energy facilities to satisfy information
requests or support in-process collaboration with
colleagues at other sites. Standardized metadata
ensure that radiographic technique information and
other pertinent testing information can be shared with
radiographic imagery. Standardized storage and
communication protocols ensure that data can be
migrated to new storage media as technological
advances or media obsolescence dictates.
Case Study: Testing Data Stored with Image
Data
As the NDT industry migrates to the digital world, one
of the challenges facing the industry is archiving and
tracking the new digital testing records. Before the use
of digital data acquisition, the hardcopy record of
testing (film, stripchart, screen print) was archived
with a copy of the paper report. The entire testing
record was stored in one package and the inspector
often annotated the hardcopy with data regarding indi-
cations. Early implementations of digital data based
testing lost this continuity of records. The paper copies
of testing reports containing information on disposi-
tion and any annotations on indications were stored in
one location, while the digital testing data (in TIFF,
JPEG or proprietary format) corresponding to several
paper reports were placed on archival media (CD-ROM,
DVD-ROM and so on) and stored separately. To review
testing results at a later date, the reviewer would need
to locate both the paper and digital testing results and
then interpret the inspector’s annotations while
viewing the image data.
The DICONDE standard offers several improve-
ments. First, DICONDE archive systems include a query
(or search) capability for all the records archived. The
reviewer would be able to search the archive by
part/serial number, testing date, testing record identi-
fication or some other combination of metadata keys
to retrieve the desired digital results. Second, by
including annotation overlays and descriptions of
metadata for describing indications, shown in Table 1,
it is possible to store all the inspector data as part of
the digital testing record.
Users are taking advantage of the features of
DICONDE as they work toward paperless testing records.
For operator-evaluated testing, the software stores the
operator’s disposition of the image including location
and type of indication using tools available in the
DICONDE standard. These data become a permanent
part of the digital testing record and can be easily
displayed on DICONDE compliant systems. Indication
data storage is also being used to develop computer
aides to assist operators in evaluating complex NDT
image data. During unassisted testing, software stores
the inspector’s disposition of the image as described
previously. For computer-assisted testing, the software
stores the information related to computer-identified
indications in the DICONDE testing record. Engineers can
then access the metadata on the operator- and
computer-assisted testing to compare and contrast
results quickly using DICONDE query features.
Specialized software packages are being developed
specifically to aid in the analysis of these data stored in
the DICONDE testing records (Sharp et al., 2009).
Case Study: Multi-modal Software Platforms
The previous examples have demonstrated the benefits
of DICONDE as a data and communication format in a
multi-site, multi-vendor NDT environment. This case
study illustrates the benefits DICONDE can provide to
NDT equipment manufacturers. The user in this case is a
major provider of NDT equipment covering a wide range
of modalities including digital radiography, computed
radiography, computed tomography, visual testing,
ultrasonic testing and eddy current testing. Developing
individual software packages to address a wide range
of testing technologies is challenging for the develop-
ment, maintenance and customer service teams.
A software suite that is part of its radiographic
product line was developed to support testing tasks from
MARCH 2010 • MATERIALS EVALUATION 323
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TABLE 1
Indication related attributes from ASTM E 2339-08 standard practice
Attribute Description

Evaluator sequence identification of individuals evaluating the image data and a summary of their findings
Evaluator number user or equipment assigned identification number for the evaluator
Evaluator name name or identification of evaluator (could be ADR)
Evaluation attempt evaluation attempt by this evaluator
Indication sequence summary of indication location and type found in the image data by this evaluator
SOP instance UID instance UID of the image data that was evaluated
Indication number user or equipment assigned identification number for the indication
Indication label user-defined label for indication
Indication description user-defined description of indication
Indication type identification of the type or nature of the indication, if known
Indication disposition recommended disposition of the indication
Indication physical property sequence information describing physical properties of the indication (amplitude, size, area, SNR and so on)
Property label user-defined label for the physical property
Property value quantifiable value associated with the physical property
Property units units for the measures of the property value of the indication
Indication ROI geometric type geometric type of ROI contour identifying the location of the indication
Number of ROI contour points number of points (triplets) in ROI contour data
Indication ROI contour data sequence of (x,y,z) triplets defining a ROI
Indication ROI contour point units code string for the units of the x,y,z triplets

ADR = assisted discontinuity recognition, ROI = region of interest, SNR = signal to noise ratio, SOP = service operator pair, UID = unique identifier

image acquisition through review to the final report. The
architecture of that software has been built around
DICONDE and uses DICONDE structures to store data and
comments from operators at different stages of the testing
process. These data and comments can be used to
generate standardized testing reports removing the need
for a paper trail. After developing the product for radiog-
raphy, the company wanted to extend the software to
cover its other testing modalities. Due to its architecture
around DICONDE, the extension of the software to other
modalities was straightforward. Like radiography, visual
data from borescope testing is similar to its medical
equivalent and was therefore the first additional modality
to be added to the software package. Using the endo-
scopic modality from DICOM, an equivalent industrial
version for borescope testing was quickly developed.
Approaching the multi-modal challenge with DICONDE
created the opportunity to reuse the tools that had been
developed for radiography, reducing development time
and cost. The reporting capabilities that rely heavily on
DICONDE can be used in either modality.
Modalities such as ultrasonic testing are not as
similar to their medical counterparts as radiographic
and visual testing. Most medical ultrasonic systems
are built around the B-scan and S-scan ultrasonic
image format. The DICOM standard does not provide
direct support for C- or A-scans that are common in
industrial testing. With the publication of ASTM E
2663-08, a standard way was offered to store the
different types of ultrasonic testing results in a
DICONDE compliant manner. This publication enabled
the same image review and reporting software to be
adapted to work for ultrasonic testing results.
This illustrates the potential of testing tools using
DICONDE not only to standardize individual software
packages but also to create integrated tools with
components that can be tailored to the needs of the
tasks in the testing process. This will benefit not only
be the users of such equipment through the common
user interfaces, but also to the producers of
equipment as the amount of software reuse will be
higher through standardized data formats.
Summary
With rapid changes driving the digitization of NDT
methods, there is a clear need to develop an industry
standard data exchange and storage method. To not do
so would limit the value of these data for both engi-
neering analysis and tracking a component’s performance
during its service life. A group of industry experts has
developed a standard for NDT data exchange and storage,
leveraging a highly successful standard from the medical
industry and the open standards development process of
ASTM International. This standard has been implemented
successfully in industry and is providing the users many
benefits of standardization. To learn more about the
adopting the DICONDE standard or to participate in its
continued development contact any of the authors. w x

324 MATERIALS EVALUATION • MARCH 2010

AUTHORS
Patrick Howard: GE Aviation, 1 Neumann Way, Mail Drop Q8,
Cincinnati, OH 45215; e-mail patrick.howard@ge.com.
Lloyd Arrowood: Y-12 National Security Complex, PO Box
2009, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-8160; e-mail
arrowoodlf@y12.doe.gov.
Matthias Jobst: GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies,
Robert Bosch Str. 3, D-50354 Hürth, Germany; e-mail
matthias.jobst@ge.com.
John Hansen: ETher NDE Ltd., 29 Common Lane, Harp-
enden, Hertsfordshire, England AL5 5BT; e-mail
john@ethernde.com.
REFERENCES
ASTM, E 2339: Standard Practice for Digital Imaging and
Communication in Nondestructive Evaluation (DICONDE), West
Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, ASTM International, 2008a.
ASTM, E 2663: Standard Practice for Digital Imaging and
Communication in Nondestructive Evaluation (DICONDE) for
Ultrasonic Test Methods, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania,
ASTM International, 2008b.
CEN, DS DS/CEN/CR 13935 Non-destructive Testing —
Generic NDE Data Format Model, Brussels, European
Committee for Standardization, 2000.
Greenburg, Sydney J., Jr., “Wear and Tear Adds up on Military
Aircraft,” National Journal, 21 March, 2008,
www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0308/032108nj1.htm.
Hewlett, James G., “The Operating Costs and Longevity of Nuclear
Power Plants,” Energy Policy, Vol. 20, 1992, pp. 608–622.
Jenkins, Stephen, Christopher Hocking and John Hansen, “NDT
and XML,” Proceedings of the 41st British Conference on Non-
Destructive Testing, Southport, England, BINDT, 2002.
McNab, I. Dunlop and I. Cornwell, “TRAPPIST — A Worksta-
tion Environment for Advanced Data Processing and
Communication in NDT,” IEE Colloquium on Advanced Tech-
niques for Collection and Interpretation of NDT Data,
London, Digest No. 1994/102, 1994, pp. 1–4.
NEMA, PS3-2008: Digital Imaging and Communications in
Medicine (DICOM), Rosslyn, Virginia, National Electrical
Manufacturers Association, 2008.
Onoe, Morio and David Gilbert, “NDTML – XML for NDT,”
Proceedings of the 10th Asia-Pacific Conference on Non-
Destructive Testing, Brisbane, Australia, 2001.
Oosterwijk, Herman, DICOM Basics, third edition, Aubrey,
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Prior, Fred W., Bradly J. Erickson and Lawrence Tarbox,
“Open Source Software Projects of the caBIG™ In Vivo
Imaging Workspace Software Special Interest Group,”
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Sharp,Thomas, Joseph Kesler, Richard Roth and Uriah
Liggett, “Mining Inspection Data,” Proceedings of ASNT
Digital Imaging XII, Columbus, Ohio, ASNT, 2009.
You, Xiaozhen and Zhihong Yao, “Application of XML in DICOM,”
Proceedings of the SPIE, Vol. 5748, 2005, pp. 446–454.
MARCH 2010 • MATERIALS EVALUATION 325