Crack detection in concrete slabs by graph-based anomalies calculation

Concrete slab cracks monitoring of modern high-speed railway is important for safety and reliability of train operation, to prevent catastrophic failure, and to reduce maintenance costs. This paper proposes a curvature filtering improved crack detection method in concrete slabs of high-speed railway via graph-based anomalies calculation. Firstly, large curvature information contained in the images is extracted for the crack identification based on an improved curvature filtering method. Secondly, a graph-based model is developed for the image sub-blocks anomalies calculation where the baseline of the subblocks is acquired by crack-free samples. Once the anomaly is large than the acquired baseline, the sub-block is considered as crack-contained block. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method performs better than convolutional neural network method even under different curvature structures and illumination conditions. This work therefore provides a useful tool for concrete slabs crack detection and is broadly applicable to variety of infrastructure systems.