A synergistic integration of photogrammetry and Gaussian Splatting for back-in-time quality inspection
Mattia TROMBINI, Domenico A. MAISANO, Fiorenzo FRANCESCHINI
Abstract. Photogrammetry is a well-established technique for 3D inspection of manufactured objects and machinery but its static nature limits re-inspection. If images lead to poor reconstruction, e.g., due to insufficient coverage, the object’s original state may become inaccessible, preventing further analysis. This work introduces a synergistic integration of photogrammetry and Gaussian Splatting (GS) to enable back-in-time quality inspection. GS creates “frozen” and fully navigable 3D digital scenes, i.e., high-fidelity 3D representations encoded with Gaussians, that preserve the spatial and temporal state of the object at the time of acquisition, allowing the generation of novel synthetic views (i.e., renders) to enrich the original photogrammetric reconstruction. A preliminary case study on the inlet lip skin part of the engine of an aircraft demonstrates how GS renders, when integrated into the photogrammetric workflow, improve the characterisation of surface defects. Results show enhanced defect localisation and a clearer delineation of damage geometry, suggesting that the proposed integration enables effective back-in-time inspections.
Keywords
Inspection, Quality, Back-in-Time Repeatability
Published online 9/10/2025, 9 pages
Copyright © 2025 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Mattia TROMBINI, Domenico A. MAISANO, Fiorenzo FRANCESCHINI, A synergistic integration of photogrammetry and Gaussian Splatting for back-in-time quality inspection, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 57, pp 20-28, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644903735-3
The article was published as article 3 of the book Italian Manufacturing Association Conference
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
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