Industrial Radiography has undergone a significant transformation in the last 15 years, evolving from darkrooms and film processing to using digital media, but more importantly digital detectors introduction has opened up radiography to the inspection of a much wider range of less usual materials, applications and environments, including oil and gas for pipe corrosion and other process induced flaws, alongside more unusual examples like wood, artworks, railway lines, nuclear decommissioning, even subsea and space.

Advanced ultrasonic methods have supplanted radiography for some complex volumetric inspections, but the radiographer aficionados amongst us will always argue the clarity and ease of interpretation of an Xray image, gives a visual image and confidence to clients that other NDT methods simply cannot display; this is now easier to show with digital images and software processing.

In addition, work in remote locations and the requirement for fast decision making has led to the advent of NDT software support server-based data transmission and analysis, enabling faster and more reliable evaluations being able to view radiographs digitally allowing expert interpretation with dedicated software onshore or less accessible locations.