Visual Bridge Damage Measurement Using Drone-Captured Image Quality Optimization

Junwon Seo, Euiseok Jeong, James Wacker

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

This study is intended to improve visual bridge damage measurement through image analysis of drone inspection images optimized in terms of quality. To optimize the drone-captured image quality, image properties, including brightness, contrast, and sharpness, are investigated and adjusted for this study. As part of the optimized damage measurement, visual inspections are initially conducted using DJI Matrice 210 for a multi-span timber bridge located in Fall River, South Dakota in the United States. To detect the entirety of any damage during the inspections, the drone records three videos of the bridge from which 15,996 images are extracted. From the drone-aided bridge inspection, several different types of damage, encompassing weathering, paint failure, crack, and split, are observed. Among all the images, the high-quality inspection images with distinct damage on certain bridge components such as timber girders are sorted out manually. Then, the various image properties for the high-quality inspection images are iteratively adjusted to optimize the images’ quality. Measurement of the individual damage detected during the inspection are completed with the optimized quality images. Particularly, the major challenge to identify the damaged area on the weathered timber bridge is resolved, as the edge domains of the damage are well-defined visualized and observed efficiently after the optimization of image quality. Key results indicate that the weathering area identified through the optimized image was measured to be 1.16 m2 but the identified area using the unfiltered image was 1.33 m2, showing a difference of 12.43%.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEuropean Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring - Special Collection of 2020 Papers - Volume 2
EditorsPiervincenzo Rizzo, Alberto Milazzo
Pages503-513
Number of pages11
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021
Event10th European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, EWSHM 2020 - Palermo, Italy
Duration: Jul 1 2022Jul 1 2022

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Civil Engineering
Volume128
ISSN (Print)2366-2557
ISSN (Electronic)2366-2565

Conference

Conference10th European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, EWSHM 2020
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityPalermo
Period7/1/227/1/22

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Keywords

  • Bridge
  • Damage measurement
  • Drone
  • Image quality optimization
  • Visual inspection

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Civil and Structural Engineering

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