@article{amirkhani_cracksight_2025,

title = {CrackSight: An Efficient Crack Segmentation Model in Varying Acquisition Ranges and Complex Backgrounds},

author = {D. Amirkhani and M. S. Allili and J. -F. Lapointe},

url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-105011756992&doi=10.1109%2FTASE.2025.3591407&partnerID=40&md5=d908b79e863a4725d10bec325b761f34},

doi = {10.1109/TASE.2025.3591407},

issn = {15455955 (ISSN)},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering},

volume = {22},

pages = {19197–19214},

abstract = {Accurate crack segmentation in concrete transportation infrastructures is critical for ensuring structural integrity and facilitating timely maintenance interventions. This paper presents CrackSight, an end-to-end deep learning model for precise crack segmentation across varying observational ranges and extremely complex backgrounds. CrackSight seamlessly integrates crack detection and segmentation through two branches. The Detection Feature Extraction Branch (DFEB) provides global context for crack localization in complex backgrounds or at far observation ranges. It guides the segmentation model to focus on regions with the highest crack-prone potential. The segmentation branch leverages the fusion of multi-scale feature maps using dilated convolutions, allowing to capture subtle and complex crack patterns. The branch also incorporates the Dual-Attention Linear Focus Mechanism (DALFM) enhancing crack segmentation through saliency-driven improvements. Finally, CrackSight uses a novel hybrid contextual loss, which dynamically compensates for class imbalance and enhance crack discrimination against complex backgrounds. Our model is also lightweight and can be run in resource-constrained environments, making it suitable for real-world inspection using mobile platforms. Our results demonstrate that it significantly improves segmentation accuracy, setting a new benchmark for crack segmentation. The dataset and additional resources are available on GitHub. Note to Practitioners—CrackSight is a dual-branch deep learning framework designed for accurate and efficient segmentation of concrete cracks under challenging real-world conditions. By combining a detection-guided localization branch with a context-aware segmentation, CrackSight offers enhanced robustness to noise, background clutter, and varying acquisition distances, common challenges in UAV-based infrastructure inspections. Its architecture integrates multi-scale feature fusion and adaptive contextual guidance, enabling reliable detection of both fine and fragmented cracks. With its lightweight design and fast inference time, CrackSight offers practitioners a practical and scalable solution for automating visual inspection tasks, reducing manual effort, and improving safety in structural health monitoring workflows. © 2025 IEEE.},

keywords = {Attention mechanisms, Codes (symbols), Complex background, complex backgrounds, Crack detection, Crack propagation, Crack segmentation, Crack segmentations, Detection features, End to end, Feature extraction, Features extraction, Global context, Image segmentation, Learning models, Learning systems, Segmentation models, Transportation infrastructures},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{hebbache_leveraging_2023,

title = {Leveraging Saliency in Single-Stage Multi-Label Concrete Defect Detection Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Imagery},

author = {L. Hebbache and D. Amirkhani and M. S. Allili and N. Hammouche and J. -F. Lapointe},

url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85149966766&doi=10.3390%2frs15051218&partnerID=40&md5=7bf1cb3353270c696c07ff24dc24655d},

doi = {10.3390/rs15051218},

issn = {20724292},

year  = {2023},

date = {2023-01-01},

journal = {Remote Sensing},

volume = {15},

number = {5},

publisher = {MDPI},

abstract = {Visual inspection of concrete structures using Unmanned Areal Vehicle (UAV) imagery is a challenging task due to the variability of defects’ size and appearance. This paper proposes a high-performance model for automatic and fast detection of bridge concrete defects using UAV-acquired images. Our method, coined the Saliency-based Multi-label Defect Detector (SMDD-Net), combines pyramidal feature extraction and attention through a one-stage concrete defect detection model. The attention module extracts local and global saliency features, which are scaled and integrated with the pyramidal feature extraction module of the network using the max-pooling, multiplication, and residual skip connections operations. This has the effect of enhancing the localisation of small and low-contrast defects, as well as the overall accuracy of detection in varying image acquisition ranges. Finally, a multi-label loss function detection is used to identify and localise overlapping defects. The experimental results on a standard dataset and real-world images demonstrated the performance of SMDD-Net with regard to state-of-the-art techniques. The accuracy and computational efficiency of SMDD-Net make it a suitable method for UAV-based bridge structure inspection. © 2023 by the authors.},

note = {Publisher: MDPI},

keywords = {Aerial vehicle, Aircraft detection, Antennas, Computational efficiency, Concrete defects, Deep learning, Defect detection, extraction, Feature extraction, Features extraction, Image acquisition, Image Enhancement, Multi-labels, One-stage concrete defect detection, Saliency, Single stage, Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), Unmanned areal vehicle imagery},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}