GRENOBLE, France – April 27, 2012 – Minalogic, the global competitive cluster dedicated to micro- and nanotechnologies and embedded software, has announced that the Delpix project has enabled the creation of a full X-ray rapid-tomography system for quality inspection on the production line.
While X-ray computed tomography, or CT scan, has been widely used for years in the medical field, it is still rarely employed in manufacturing because of the slowness of the image-acquisition and reconstruction processes and the low attainable resolution. By unlocking these barriers, the three-year, 8.5 million-euro (approx. $11 million) project was able to shorten the time required to inspect products from several minutes to only a few seconds, making it a valuable tool for industrial quality control.
“By integrating this technology in industrial processes, the Delpix project developed the only X-ray tomography platform of its kind in France, overcoming the cost and quality issues that have long been barriers to using this modality in manufacturing,” said Jean Chabbal, Minalogic’s chief executive. “The success of this project also highlights the key competencies that Grenoble offers in the fields of digital imaging, and Minalogic’s role in helping bring that expertise together in one project.”
The Delpix project developed:
- A new generation of X-ray flat-panel detectors with a significantly lower cost, higher robustness and a unique image quality
- A new software for synchronized, real-time 3D image reconstruction with a more than 20x speed improvement over the previous generation
- An automated processing software of the 3D reconstructed data, enabling the automatic detection of defects in the inspected pieces (assembling, setting, material quality inspection, etc.)
- Partners in the project include Thales and Trixell (major companies), CyXplus, Digisens and Noesis (SMEs), and INP Grenoble and INSA Lyon (academy).
About Minalogic
Created in 2005, the Minalogic global competetive cluster in Grenoble is a public/private partnership with more than 200 members dedicated to supporting integration of hardware and embedded software. Minalogic’s collaborative projects are focused on developing products and services that capitalize on the potential of better combinations of micro- and nanotechnology and embedded software. The cluster encourages and supports industry research-training collaborations with companies in Europe, Asia and the U.S., while responding to the global high-tech community’s need to identify new value-added services that can be integrated into existing products in health care, the environment, mobility, the media, the textile industry and other areas.
