Vision-based concrete crack detection technique using cascade features

This paper presents an existing face detection method using cascade features updated for determining the cracks on concrete surfaces. The main goal of structural health monitoring (SHM) is to safeguard our existing structures from cracks, corrosion, delamination, and spalls due to incessant use of structures. Cracks are the foremost defect that will occur in the structures, and they require quick attention before they lead to structural failure; it is a laborious job to detect the cracks using personnel (visual inspection) practices, which produce highly unreliable results. The results of contact sensor-based crack detection techniques, however, mainly depend on parameters such as temperature, sensitivity, accessibility, etc. Recently there has been high expansion in computer vision (image processing) techniques that facilitate the detection of cracks. In this study, a modified cascade face detection technique based on the Viola-Jones algorithm is proposed to detect cracks in concrete walls. Cascade features calculated from the Viola-Jones algorithm are trained on positive and negative datasets of images with and without cracks. Once training is completed, the Viola-Jones algorithm spots the cracks on test images with bounding boxes drawn around the region of the cracks.