Skip to main content

A Vision-Based Method for Automatic Crack Detection in Railway Sleepers

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Recognition Systems CORES 2017 (CORES 2017)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 578))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

In this paper, a method for automatic selection and classification of the sleeper cracks is presented. This method includes three main sequential steps of image pre-processing, sleeper detection and crack detection. Two approaches including rule-based method and template matching method in the frequency domain are proposed for the sleeper detection step. We utilize adaptive threshold binarization to handle challenging crack detection under non-uniform lightening condition and hierarchical structure for the decision making step. Two unsupervised classifiers are exploited to detect the cracks. The results show that the presented method has the overall detection rate with accuracy of at least 87 percent.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/rbf/HIPR2/adpthrsh.htm. Accessed 04 Oct 2016

  2. Bernsen, J.: Dynamic thresholding of gray-level images. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, pp. 1251–1255 (1986)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Fujita, Y., Mitani, Y., Hamamoto, Y.: A method for crack detection on a concrete structure. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR 2006), vol. 3, pp. 901–904 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Gatos, B., Pratikakis, I., Perantonis, S.J.: Adaptive degraded document image binarization. Pattern Recogn. 39(3), 317–327 (2006). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031320305003821

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  5. Goshtasby, A., Gage, S.H., Bartholic, J.F.: A two-stage cross correlation approach to template matching. IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 6(3), 374–378 (1984)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Khan, M.H., Helsper, J., Yang, C., Grzegorzek, M.: An automatic vision-based monitoring system for accurate Vojta-Therapy. In: Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE/ACIS 15th International Conference on Computer and Information Science (ICIS), pp. 1–6. IEEE (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Khan, M.H., Shirahama, K., Farid, M.S., Grzegorzek, M.: Multiple human detection in depth images. In: International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP). IEEE (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Le, T.H.N., Bui, T.D., Suen, C.Y.: Ternary entropy-based binarization of degraded document images using morphological operators. In: 2011 International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, pp. 114–118, September 2011

    Google Scholar 

  9. Lu, S., Su, B., Tan, C.L.: Document image binarization using background estimation and stroke edges. Int. J. Doc. Anal. Recogn. (IJDAR) 13(4), 303–314 (2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10032-010-0130-8

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Lyon, D.: The discrete fourier transform, part 6: cross-correlation. J. Object Technol. 9(2), 17–22 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Mohammad, S.P.: Machine vision for automating visual inspection of wooden railway sleepers. Master’s thesis, Department of Computer Science, Dalarna University (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Niblack, W.: An Introduction to Digital Image Processing. Strandberg Publishing Company, Birkeroed (1985). pp. 115–116

    Google Scholar 

  13. Oh, H.H., Lim, K., Chien, S.I.: An improved binarization algorithm based on a water flow model for document image with inhomogeneous backgrounds. Pattern Recogn. 38(12), 2612–2625 (2005). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031320305001317

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Oliveira, H., Correia, P.L.: Automatic road crack detection and characterization. IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst. 14(1), 155–168 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Otsu, N.: A threshold selection method from gray-level histograms. IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. 9(1), 62–66 (1979). http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TSMC.1979.4310076

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  16. Prasanna, P., Dana, K.J., Gucunski, N., Basily, B.B., La, H.M., Lim, R.S., Parvardeh, H.: Automated crack detection on concrete bridges. IEEE Trans. Autom. Sci. Eng. 13(2), 591–599 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Sauvola, J., Pietikäinen, M.: Adaptive document image binarization. Pattern Recogn. 33(2), 225–236 (2000). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031320399000552

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Su, B., Lu, S., Tan, C.L.: Binarization of historical document images using the local maximum and minimum. In: Proceedings of the 9th IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems, DAS 2010, NY, USA, pp. 159–166 (2010). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1815330.1815351

  19. Yamaguchi, T., Nakamura, S., Hashimoto, S.: An efficient crack detection method using percolation-based image processing. In: 2008 3rd IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications, pp. 1875–1880, June 2008

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ahmad Delforouzi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Delforouzi, A., Tabatabaei, A.H., Khan, M.H., Grzegorzek, M. (2018). A Vision-Based Method for Automatic Crack Detection in Railway Sleepers. In: Kurzynski, M., Wozniak, M., Burduk, R. (eds) Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Recognition Systems CORES 2017. CORES 2017. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 578. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59162-9_14

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59162-9_14

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-59161-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-59162-9

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics