Nuclear power plants require in-vessel inspections for soundness checks and preventive maintenance. One inspection procedure is visual testing (VT), which is based on video images of an underwater camera in a nuclear reactor. However, a lot of noise is superimposed on VT images due to radiation exposure. We propose a technique for improving the quality of those images by image processing that reduces radiation noise and enhances signals. Real-time video processing was achieved by applying the proposed technique with a parallel processing unit. Improving the clarity of VT images will lead to reducing the burden on inspectors.

The two-dimensional nested cellular automata array presented here as a method for testing CCD arrays accommodates a set of spatial bilateral inhibition and excitation, and thus generates spatio-temporal artificial chaotic signals. Adequate use of the spatio-temporal pulses achieves exact line detection that is completely different from the template-matching scheme used by conventional methods.