Neural rendering enables dynamic tomography
This work addresses a critical limitation in materials science by enabling dynamic tomography for observing deformation in real-time, representing a paradigm shift rather than an incremental improvement.
The paper tackled the problem of reconstructing full 3D tomography during dynamic experiments without interruption, which was previously impossible, and demonstrated that neural rendering tools, specifically neural radiance fields, can reconstruct data more efficiently than conventional methods, achieving improved results in real-world experiments.
Interrupted X-ray computed tomography (X-CT) has been the common way to observe the deformation of materials during an experiment. While this approach is effective for quasi-static experiments, it has never been possible to reconstruct a full 3d tomography during a dynamic experiment which cannot be interrupted. In this work, we propose that neural rendering tools can be used to drive the paradigm shift to enable 3d reconstruction during dynamic events. First, we derive theoretical results to support the selection of projections angles. Via a combination of synthetic and experimental data, we demonstrate that neural radiance fields can reconstruct data modalities of interest more efficiently than conventional reconstruction methods. Finally, we develop a spatio-temporal model with spline-based deformation field and demonstrate that such model can reconstruct the spatio-temporal deformation of lattice samples in real-world experiments.