Ultrasonic guided waves have been used for a wide variety of ultrasonic inspection techniques. We describe here a new variation called helical ultrasound tomography (HUT). This new technique, among other things, has direct application to advanced pipe inspection. HUT uses guided ultrasonic waves along with an adaptation of the tomographic reconstruction algorithms developed by seismologists for what they call “cross borehole” tomography. In HUT, the Lamb‐like guided waves travel in various helical crisscross paths between two parallel circumferential transducer arrays instead of the planar crisscross seismic paths between two boreholes. Although the measurement itself is fairly complicated, the output of the tomographic reconstruction is a readily interpretable map of a quantity of interest such as pipe wall thickness. We demonstrate the feasibility of the HUT technique via laboratory scans on steel pipe segments into which controlled thinnings have been introduced. © 2004 American Institute of Physics