Virtual Centre for Industrial & Process Tomography

What is the Virtual Centre?

The UK has been the leading centre of process tomography in the world founded upon the Virtual Centre for Industrial and Process Tomography (VCIPT), set up in 1996 through the major £3.3M "Technology Foresight Challenge" programme by academic researchers from the Universities of Leeds and Manchester; and later continued from EPSRC Platform Grant support. European Commission support for coordination of Europe-wide research through a Concerted Action followed by Thematic Network has also been used. The original consortium of 15 small and large industrial companies with complementary interests and research universities was formed to apply the technology developed in universities to several challenging industrial processes. The VCIPT was led and managed by researchers at the universities of Leeds and Manchester. The major focus of the VCIPT has been on multi-dimensional sensing based primarily upon tomographic sensing. (See: What is Industrial Process Tomography? for more details).

To develop and expand a world community the VCIPT launched a biennial World Congress in Industrial Process Tomography (IPT) series in 1999 in the UK. This was followed by four further World Congress event in venues around the world. In 2009 this task was passed to the International Society for Industrial Process Tomography (www.isipt.org) who organised the 6th World Congress in Beijing in 2010, followed by the 7th World Congress in Krakow in 2013. The next World Congress is planned to take place in Brazil in 2016. Other regional events are also planned in 2014 and 2015.