View synthesis for depth from motion 3D x-ray imaging.

The depth from motion or kinetic depth X-ray imaging (KDEX) technique is designed to enhance the luggage screening at airport checkpoints. The technique requires multiple views of the luggage to be obtained from an arrangement of linear X-ray detector arrays. This research investigated a solution to the unique problems defined when considering the possibility of replacing some of the X-ray sensor views with synthetic images. If sufficiently high quality synthetic images can be generated then intermediary X-ray sensors can be removed to minimise the hardware requirements and improve the commercial viability of the KDEX technique. Existing image synthesis algorithms are developed for visible light images. Due to fundamental differences between visible light and X-ray images, those algorithms are not directly applicable to the X-ray scenario. The conditions imposed by the X-ray images have instigated the original research and novel algorithm development and experimentation that form the body of this work. A voting based dual criteria multiple X-ray images synthesis algorithm (V-DMX) is proposed to exploit the potential of two matching criteria and information contained in a sequence of images. The V-DMX algorithm is divided into four stages