No abstract

Infrared (IR) spectra contain detailed and extensive information about the chemical composition and bonding environment in a sample. However, this information is difficult to extract from complex heterogeneous systems because of overlapping absorptions due to different generative factors. We implement a deep learning approach to study the complex spectroscopic changes that occur in cross-linked polyethylene (PEXa) pipe by training a β-variational autoencoder (β-VAE) on a database of PEX-a pipe spectra. We show that the β-VAE outperforms principal component analysis (PCA) and learns interpretable and independent representations of the generative factors of variance in the spectra. We apply the β-VAE encoder to a hyperspectrum of a crack in the wall of a pipe to evaluate the spatial distribution of these learned representations. This study shows how deep learning architectures like β-VAE can enhance the analysis of spectroscopic data of complex heterogeneous systems.

Hyperspectral infrared (IR) images contain a large amount of highly spatially resolved information about the chemical composition of a sample. However, the analysis of hyperspectral IR imaging data for complex heterogeneous systems can be challenging because of the spectroscopic and spatial complexity of the data. We implement a deep generative modeling approach using a β-variational autoencoder to learn disentangled representations of the generative factors of variance in a data set of crosslinked polyethylene (PEX-a) pipe. We identify three distinct physicochemical factors of aging and degradation learned by the model and apply the trained model to high-resolution hyperspectral IR images of cross-sectional slices of unused virgin, used in-service, and cracked PEX-a pipe. By mapping the learned representations of aging and degradation to the IR images, we extract detailed information on the physicochemical changes that occur during aging, degradation, and cracking in PEX-a pipe. This study shows how representation learning by deep generative modeling can significantly enhance the analysis of high-resolution IR images of complex heterogeneous samples.