 Inspection techniques can be portable or stationary.Industrial radiography is used in welding, casting parts or composite pieces inspection, in food inspection and luggage control, in sorting and recycling, in EOD and IED analysis, aircraft maintenance, ballistics, turbine inspection, in surface characterisation, coating thickness measurement, in counterfeit drug control, ...

Radiography started in 1895 with the discovery of X-rays (later also called Röntgen rays after the man who first described their properties in detail), a type of electromagnetic radiation.Soon after the discovery of X-rays, radioactivity was discovered.