An improved thermal contrast method is proposed for pulsed infrared thermography. It is based on the computations of reconstructed defect-free images so that no a priori knowledge of a sound area on the sample is necessary. Moreover, a correction is applied to take into account possible delays in the acquisition time. Results are presented both on PlexiglasTM and graphite-epoxy specimens. Comparisons with Pulsed Phase Thermography phase images are also presented along with a discussion on the advantages of the proposed method.

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