Our position is simple: the future of NDT is open, accessible, and interoperable. In practice, this means being clear about a transition away from closed file structures, widening access to developer tools, and participating in governance that reflects industry consensus rather than one vendor’s roadmap. Open formats reduce friction, accelerate integration, and keep data useful for new use cases from advanced signal processing to machine learning, while avoiding vendor dependency. This also reflects how the community is organizing around standards work, and NDT 4.0.
Eddyfi Technologies has supported system integration and interoperability in the past, providing customers with access to our APIs and SDKs to help automate inspections, stream data, and build custom tools suited to their needs. While our infrastructure facilitated many successful projects, the close nature of our ecosystem had sometime created obstacles. Accessibility was not always simple; it was even often complex, with availability not being uniform across product lines. Our goal now is to remove those friction points and focus on improving the tools that worked well, so data and tools are easier to reach and use.
AI and modern software move fast. Customers want to use their data in their own pipelines, try new methods, train models, and ensure long-term archiving and traceability. A closed format slows this down. An open, well-documented format reduces conversion work, lowers risk, and protects the value of data over time. The .NDE/UNIS proposal reflects what many in the industry want from data formats. We interpret this as a strong indication of of what users expect from vendors going forward.
Our openness work is coupled with participation in major NDT committees, including COFREND (Confédération Française pour les Essais Non Destructifs), EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute), and ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials). The goal is to contribute to a vendor-neutral, consensus-based format that supports multiple modalities, including Ultrasonic Testing (UT) and Eddy Current Testing (ET), and that works in the field. Committee work is where taxonomies mature, and conformance expectations are clarified, so implementations do not drift, and users do not end up with incompatible versions of openness. In recent months, committees have made significant progress in developing an open data format for the UT modality, enabling support for Phased Array (PA), Total Focusing Method (TFM)/Full Matrix Capture (TFM/FMC), and complex scanning trajectories involving robotic systems.
More recently, COFREND and EPRI have begun aligning efforts on ONDE (Open Non-Destructive Evaluation), a new format expected to support advanced UT first, followed by ET. The ONDE work involves manufacturers, end users, and academic and research centers. Eddyfi Technologies is contributing to help ensure the standard reflects field needs and can be integrated efficiently into our product portfolio.
A successful open strategy does not happen overnight. It will take some time to develop the appropriate export/import function for a new open format and even more time to support it natively across products. This is a core commitment for Eddyfi Technologies, and the roadmap is outlined below.
This strategy is about trust. Data should remain portable. Tools should be documented and available. Our contribution to standards should honor vendor neutrality. The steps are concrete: better access to data, HDF5-based export and import, APIs, and a progression to a native open data format. As the NDT community aligns on structures and governance, we will keep focusing on the details that make openness work in practice: performance, metadata fidelity, and developer experience. The result should be simple: better access to high-quality data, fewer barriers between systems, and more room for innovation across the NDT community. We welcome ongoing input from our customers and partners as we continue to advance openness in NDT.
Want to learn more or share your perspective? Contact us to discuss how we can advance openness and innovation together in the NDT community.