Patent ID: 8788219

Claim:
Method of determining a boundary of a first anomaly in a wall of a pipeline from a first set of data elements of the wall of the pipeline, an element of the first set comprising a first coordinate along a first direction along the wall, a second coordinate along a second direction along the wall that is different from the first direction, and a parameter indicative of a depth of the first anomaly, at a position along the wall indicated by the first and second coordinate, the method comprising the steps: a) determining, by evaluating the parameters of the data elements, a data element that is associated with a minimum or a maximum in a value of the parameter of the data element; b) comparing, for at least one data element present on a path along the wall which extends away from the data element found in step a), a value of the parameter of the at least one data element with a predetermined threshold; c) determining an initial edge data element for which, during comparing in step b), a value of the parameter of the initial edge data element has reached the threshold and a value in the parameter for an adjacent data element in the path along the wall has not reached the threshold, and wherein the boundary of the first anomaly comprises the initial edge data element; d) determining, by evaluating the parameter of at least one data element that is adjacent to the initial edge data element determined in step c), a next edge data element that is different from the initial edge data element determined in step c) and for which the value of the parameter has reached the threshold; e) determining further edge data elements by repeating step d) a plurality of times wherein each next edge data element that is determined in a step d) is different from previously determined edge data elements; and f) determining the boundary of the first anomaly by combining the first and second coordinates of the edge data elements determined in steps c)-e), wherein a non-transitory computer is used to carry out the method.