# PQTNet: Pixel-wise Quantitative Thermography Neural Network for Estimating Defect Depth in Polylactic Acid Parts by Additive Manufacturing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03314 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.03314/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 7 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [EfficientNetV2: Smaller Models and Faster Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00298/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Defect depth quantification in additively manufactured (AM) components remains a significant challenge for non-destructive testing (NDT). This study proposes a Pixel-wise Quantitative Thermography Neural Network (PQT-Net) to address this challenge for polylactic acid (PLA) parts. A key innovation is a novel data augmentation strategy that reconstructs thermal sequence data into two-dimensional stripe images, preserving the complete temporal evolution of heat diffusion for each pixel. The PQT-Net architecture incorporates a pre-trained EfficientNetV2-S backbone and a custom Residual Regression Head (RRH) with learnable parameters to refine outputs. Comparative experiments demonstrate the superiority of PQT-Net over other deep learning models, achieving a minimum Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 0.0094 mm and a coefficient of determination (R) exceeding 99%. The high precision of PQT-Net underscores its potential for robust quantitative defect characterization in AM.