Spectral X-ray CT for fast NDT using discrete tomography

We present progress in fast, high-resolution imaging, material classification, and fault detection using hyperspectral X-ray measurements. Classical X-ray CT approaches rely on data from many projection angles, resulting in long acquisition and reconstruction times. Additionally, conventional CT cannot distinguish between materials with similar densities. However, in additive manufacturing, the majority of materials used are known a priori. This knowledge allows to vastly reduce the data collected and increase the accuracy of fault detection. In this context, we propose an imaging method for non-destructive testing of materials based on the combination of spectral X-ray CT and discrete tomography. We explore the use of spectral X-ray attenuation models and measurements to recover the characteristic functions of materials in heterogeneous media with piece-wise uniform composition. We show by means of numerical simulation that using spectral measurements from a small number of angles, our approach can alleviate the typical deterioration of spatial resolution and the appearance of streaking artifacts.Mechanical Engineerin

A sketched finite element method for elliptic models

We consider a sketched implementation of the finite element method for elliptic partial differential equations on high-dimensional models. Motivated by applications in real-time simulation and prediction we propose an algorithm that involves projecting the finite element solution onto a low-dimensional subspace and sketching the reduced equations using randomised sampling. We show that a sampling distribution based on the leverage scores of a tall matrix associated with the discrete Laplacian operator, can achieve nearly optimal performance and a significant speedup. We derive an expression of the complexity of the algorithm in terms of the number of samples that are necessary to meet an error tolerance specification with high probability, and an upper bound for the distance between the sketched and the high-dimensional solutions. Our analysis shows that the projection not only reduces the dimension of the problem but also regularises the reduced system against sketching error. Our numerical simulations suggest speed improvements of two orders of magnitude in exchange for a small loss in the accuracy of the prediction