Fraunhofer EZRT XXL-CT Instance Segmentation Me163

The ’Me 163’ was a Second World War fighter airplane and a result of the German air force secret developments. One of these airplanes is currently owned and displayed in the historic aircraft exhibition of the ’Deutsches Museum’ in Munich, Germany. To gain insights with respect to its history, design and state of preservation, a complete CT scan was obtained using an industrial XXL-computer tomography scanner.

Using the CT data from the Me 163, all its details can visually be examined at various levels, ranging from the complete hull down to single sprockets and rivets. However, while a trained human observer can identify and interpret the volumetric data with all its parts and connections, a virtual dissection of the airplane and all its different parts would be quite desirable. Nevertheless, this means, that an instance segmentation of all components and objects of interest into disjoint entities from the CT data is necessary.

As of currently, no adequate computer-assisted tools for automated or semi-automated segmentation
of such XXL-airplane data are available, in a first step, an interactive data annotation and object labeling process has been established. So far, seven sub-volumes from the Me 163 airplane have been annotated and labeled, whose results can potentially be used for various new applications in the field of digital heritage, non-destructive testing, or machine-learning. These annotated and labeled data sets are available here.