Patent Document ID: 20040118898
Application ID: 10326911
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of spatially integrating multiple pipeline datasets, comprising: (a) receiving multiple inline inspection datasets, each dataset having data representing the positions of welds in a pipeline; (b) designating one dataset as master and the at least one other dataset as slave; and (c) for each slave, (i) identifying at least one weld of the master as a seed weld and spatially matching the corresponding weld of the slave to the seed weld to form a seed weld pair; (ii) beginning at the pipeline position of the seed weld pair and proceeding in a selected pipeline direction, determining for each weld of the master whether there is a matching weld of the slave, by identifying a weld of the slave having a pipeline position within a selected error band distance of the pipeline position of the weld of the master; (iii) repositioning the pipeline position of each matched weld of the slave to the pipeline position of the corresponding weld of the master, then repositioning the pipeline positions of all other data in the slave dataset to correspond to the repositioned welds of the slave; then (d) compiling an integrated dataset comprising the data of the master and the repositioned data of each slave.