The development in materials technology has produced stronger, lighter, stiffer, and more durable electrically insulating composites which are replacing metals in many applications. These composites require alternative inspection techniques because the conventional nondestructive testing (NDT) techniques such as thermography, eddy currents, ultrasonic, X-ray and magnetic particles have limitations of inspecting them. Microwave NDT technique employing open-ended rectangular waveguides (OERW) has emerged as a promising approach to detect the defects in both metal and composite materials. Despite its promising results over conventional NDT techniques, OERW microwave NDT technique has shown numerous limitations in terms of poor spatial resolution due to the stand-off distance variations, inspection area irregularities and quantitative estimation in imaging the size of defects. Microwave NDT employing OERW in conjunction with robust artificial intelligence approaches have tremendous potential and viability for evaluating composite structures for the purpose mentioned here. Artificial intelligence techniques with signal processing techniques are highly possible to enhance the efficiency and resolution of microwave NDT technique because the impact of artificial intelligence approaches is proven in various conventional NDT techniques. This paper provides a comprehensive review of NDT techniques as well as the prospect of using artificial intelligence approaches in microwave NDT technique with regards to other conventional NDT techniques. INDEX TERMS Microwave nondestructive testing, open-ended rectangular waveguides, artificial intelligence.

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