The use of pulse-compression thermography for detecting defects in paintings

Interest in the conservation of paintings grows year by year. Their periodic inspection is essential for their conservation over the time. Thermographic non-destructive inspection is one technique useful for paintings, but it is essential to be able to detect buried defects while minimising the level of thermal stimulus. This paper describes a pulse-compression infrared thermography technique whereby defect detection is optimized while minimising the rise in temperature. To accomplish this task, LED lamps driven by a coded waveform based on a linear frequency modulated chirp signal have been used on paintings on both a wooden panel and a canvas layer. These specimens contained artificially fabricated defects. Although the physical condition of each painting was different, the experimental results show that the proposed signal processing procedure is able to detect defects using a low temperature contrast.