AE-RTISNet: Aeronautics engine radiographic testing inspection system net with an improved fast region-based convolutional neural network framework

To ensure safety in aircraft flying, we aimed to use deep learning methods of nondestructive examination with multiple defect detection paradigms for X-ray image detection. The use of the fast region-based convolutional neural network (Fast R-CNN)-driven model was to augment and improve the existing automated non-destructive testing (NDT) diagnosis. Within the context of X-ray screening, limited numbers and insufficient types of X-ray aeronautics engine defect data samples can, thus, pose another problem in the performance accuracy of training models tackling multiple detections. To overcome this issue, we employed a deep learning paradigm of transfer learning tackling both single and multiple detection. Overall, the achieved results obtained more than 90% accuracy based on the aeronautics engine radiographic testing inspection system net (AE-RTISNet) retrained with eight types of defect detection. Caffe structure software was used to perform network tracking detection over multiple Fast R-CNNs. We determined that the AE-RTISNet provided the best results compared with the more traditional multiple Fast R-CNN approaches, which were simple to translate to C++ code and installed in the Jetson^™ TX2 embedded computer. With the use of the lightning memory-mapped database (LMDB) format, all input images were 640 × 480 pixels. The results achieved a 0.9 mean average precision (mAP) on eight types of material defect classifier problems and required approximately 100 microseconds.