Abstract: A radiographic test is conducted on a welded portion of a pipe or the like to form a radiographic image, which is introduced into a computer. Volumetric defects and planar defects in the radiographic image are emphasized and extracted by separate methods to obtain a volumetric candidate defect image and a planar candidate defect image. The candidate defect images are then combined to form a single image in which defects can be easily identified. Features of defects in the images are measured, and a set of interference rules is applied to the measured features. Each inference rule gives a degree of certainty that a defect is of a certain type. The degrees of certainty determined by a plurality of the rules are collated to obtain a total degree of certainty, and the type of a defect is inferred from the total degree of certainty.