Bridge Crack Extraction Method Based on Image-connected Domain

Abstract

Cracking is a typical kind of defect present in cement concrete bridges. Image-based bridge crack detection is a new technology for the lossless digital detection of bridge defects. An image-based method is proposed for recognizing and extracting the characteristic parameters of cracks on the bridge surface. Three main processes are aimed at resolving the interference of construction joints, sunlight, defacements, and vibration. First, the characteristics of cracks found in the acquired and denoised bridge images are analyzed. Second, suspicious cracks are extracted using pixel gray-value comparison. Finally, false cracks are removed through the computed measurement of the connected domain, whereas true cracks are maintained. The qualities of the images are tested, and the results show that the proposed method exhibits robustness and efficiency in detecting bridge cracks.