U - Net Based Crack Detection in Road and Railroad Tunnels Using Data Acquired by Mobile Device

Abstract: Infrastructures like bridges and tunnels are significant for the economy and growth of countries, however, the risk of failure increases as they getting aged. Therefore, a systematic monitoring scheme is necessary to check the integrity regularly. Among all the defects, cracks are the most common ones that can be observed directly by camera or mapping system. Meanwhile, cracks are capable and reliable indicators. As a result, crack detection is one of the most broadly researched topic. As the limitation of computing resource vanishing, deep learning methods are developing rapidly and used widely. U-net is one of the latest deep learning methods for image classification and has shown overwhelming adaptability and performance in medical images. It is promising to be capable for crack detection.  In this thesis project, a U-net approach is used to automatically detect road and tunnel cracks. An open-source crack detection dataset is used for training. The model is improved by new parameter settings and fine-tuning and transformed onto the data acquired by the mobile mapping system of TACK team. Image processing techniques such as class imbalance handling and center line are also used for improvement. At last, qualitative and quantitative statistics are used to illustrate superiority of the methods.  This thesis project is a sub-project of project TACK, which is an ongoing research project carried out by KTH - Royal Institute of Technology, Sapienza University of Rome and WSP Sweden company under the InfraSweden2030 program funded by Vinnova. The main objective of TACK is developing a methodology for automatic detection and measurement of cracks on tunnel linings or other infrastructures.