Efficient Algorithm for Crack Detection in Sewer Images from Closed-Circuit Television Inspections
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 20, Issue 2
Abstract
This paper presents a new algorithm for automated crack detection in sewer inspection closed-circuit television (CCTV) images. Cracks often have a long and thin rectangular shape with a darker appearance relative to other components in the image; therefore, they typically manifest as edges. The proposed algorithm exploits previous information on the visual characteristics of crack features in typical CCTV images to efficiently identify actual cracks and filter out background noise. The algorithm consists of three main steps. The first preprocessing step prepares the CCTV image for crack detection by identifying a set of candidate crack fragments using the Sobel method to detect horizontal and vertical edges separately. The Hough transform is then used to identify and remove the edges associated with information labels typically found in CCTV images. The second step applies a set of morphological operations to enhance candidate crack segments by filling the gaps between closely adjacent and aligned edges. The enhancement step results in merging crack fragments that potentially represent segments of the same crack curve. In the third step, two filters are defined based on previous knowledge of the visual characteristics of cracks, and then applied to remove noise edges and extract a set of real crack segments. We tested the proposed algorithm on a set of CCTV videos obtained from the cities of Regina and Calgary in Canada. The experimental results demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, and showed its robustness in detecting various patterns of sewer cracks.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Loretta Gette of the City of Regina and Jeff Galloway of the City of Calgary for providing data and feedback throughout this project. The authors also thank Syed Imran and Blaine Ganong for their valuable comments and feedback.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 20 • Issue 2 • June 2014
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 2, 2012
Accepted: Apr 16, 2013
Published online: Dec 30, 2013
Discussion open until: May 30, 2014
Published in print: Jun 1, 2014
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