Inspection systems for quarantine and methods thereof

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10436932-B2
Application number	US-201615279207-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 28, 2016
Priority date	Dec 29, 2015
Publication date	Oct 8, 2019
Grant date	Oct 8, 2019

Abstract

The present disclosure discloses an inspection system for quarantine and a method thereof. The CT technology is applied to the field of quarantine supervision, overcoming a problem of objects in an image of a single-view or a multi-view X-ray machine being overlapped, as well as a problem of organics including contrabands in a conventional CT image being not highlighted, not elaborated, and having bad contrast. Accuracy and efficiency of inspecting an object by human operator for quarantine inspection can be considerably improved, which is of a high application value.

First claim

We claim:

1. An inspection system for quarantine, the system comprising:
a computed tomography (CT) scan device configured to perform a CT scan on an object being scanned to obtain projection data;
a computing unit configured to perform a reconstruction, based on the projection data, to obtain image data reflecting internal features of the object being scanned, and determine an organic and/or contraband part in the object being scanned; and
a display unit configured to enhance or highlight display of the determined organic and/or contraband part relative to another part, wherein the display and/or computer unit is configured to stretch a grayscale range for display of the organic and/or contraband part to a larger range.

2. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the organic and/or non-organic part of the object being scanned is distinguished based on a physical attribute of the object being scanned.

3. The inspection system according to claim 2 , wherein the physical attribute comprises at least one selected from: attenuation coefficient, basis-material coefficient, CT number, density, and/or effective atomic number.

4. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the contraband part and a non-contraband part are distinguished based on at least one selected from: a physical attribute, a shape feature, and/or a texture feature, of the object being scanned.

5. The inspection system according to claim 4 , wherein the contraband part and a non-contraband part are distinguished based on a physical attribute and the physical attribute comprises at least one selected from: attenuation coefficient, base-material coefficient, CT number, density, and/or effective atomic number.

6. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the CT scan device is configured to perform a single-energy CT scan or a dual-energy CT scan on the object being scanned; and the computing unit is configured to reconstruct an attenuation-coefficient image, a CT-value image or an effective-atomic-number image, of the object being scanned, and determine the organic and/or contraband part in the object being scanned according to at least one selected from: a shape feature, a texture feature, and/or a physical attribute.

7. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the display unit is configured to enhance contrast of the organic and/or contraband part of the object being scanned.

8. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the display unit is configured to indicate the organic and/or contraband part of the object being scanned.

9. The inspection system according to claim 8 , wherein the display unit is configured to cause display of the organic and/or contraband part of the object being scanned with a box, an arrow, a flash or an assigned special color.

10. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the display unit is configured to hide a non-organic and/or non-contraband part of the object being scanned.

11. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the display unit is configured to weaken display of a non-organic and/or non-contraband part of the object being scanned.

12. The inspection system according to claim 11 , wherein the display unit is configured to perform grayscale range reduction, same color display, gray display, transparency increase or saturation degree decrease on the non-organic part and/or non-contraband part of the object being scanned.

13. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the display unit is configured to weaken display of the non-organic and/or non-contraband part, while enhance display of the organic and/or contraband part.

14. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the computing unit is configured to determine a foreground part of the image data; and remove pixels in the foreground part whose attenuation coefficient, CT number and/or effective atomic number is larger than a predetermined value, so as to eliminate a shield by the foreground part of the organic and/or contraband part.

15. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the computing unit is configured to weaken pixels of the image data whose attenuation coefficient, CT number and/or effective atomic number is larger than a predetermined value.

16. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the computing unit is configured to identify contraband according to a template; and highlight an image of the contraband for the display unit.

17. The inspection system according to claim 1 , further comprising a DR (Digital- Radiography) scan device configured to operate in synchronization with the CT scan device to obtain a transmitted image, and the inspection system is configured to cause display of a CT image and the transmitted image on a screen of the display unit.

18. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the computing unit is configured to automatically segment an image of the object being scanned, which is a mixture of multiple kinds of articles, into separate articles according to their outline edges, so as to facilitate a human operator to judge the image.

19. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the computing unit is configured to compare an appearance of a 3D image of the object being scanned with a template in a suspect image database; and highlight a suspect object in connection with a result of substance identification.

20. The inspection system according to claim 1 , wherein the computing unit is configured to automatically identify shape features of contrabands which are frequently labeled by a user and record the shape features in a database.

21. The inspection system according to claim 7 , wherein the computing unit is configured to divide organic parts and/or contraband parts into a plurality of sub-categories based on a classification standard, and assign different colors to pixels of object parts associated with different sub-categories.

22. An inspection method, comprising:
performing a computed tomography (CT) scan on an object being scanned to obtain projection data;
performing a reconstruction, based on the projection data, to obtain image data reflecting internal features of the object being scanned;
determining an organic and/or contraband part of the object being scanned; and
enhancing or highlighting display of the determined organic part and/or contraband part relative to another part,
wherein a grayscale range for display of the organic and/or contraband part is stretched to a larger range.

23. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising computer-executable instructions, when executed, configured to cause one or more processors to cause at least:
performance of a computed tomography (CT) scan on an object being scanned to obtain projection data;
performance of a reconstruction, based on the projection data, to obtain image data reflecting internal features of the object being scanned;
determination of an organic and/or contraband part of the object being scanned; and
enhancement or highlighting of display of the determined organic part and/or contraband part relative to another part,
wherein a grayscale range for display of the organic part and/or contraband part is stretched to a larger range.

24. The computer-readable medium of claim 23 , wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the one or more processors to cause stretching of grayscale of pixels which are classified into organics or co

Assignees

• Nuctech Co Ltd
• Cints Co Ltd

Inventors

• Miao Qitian
• Chen Zhiqiang
• Zhang Li
• Sun Yunda
• Huang Ming
• Huang Qingping
• Hu Ming
• Lei Lei
• Xia Jie

Classifications

• G01N23/046

  using tomography, e.g. computed tomography [CT] · CPC title

• G01N23/04 Primary

  and forming images of the material · CPC title

• G01V5/005 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G01V5/0041

  Physics · mapped topic

• G01V5/226 Primary

  using tomography · CPC title