In urban road detection using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), challenges arise from complex and variable road structures and diversified detection environments. These unstable factors decrease GPR detection signal strength and cause signal shape distortion, negatively affecting detection accuracy. This reduces the interpretive accuracy of GPR images, impacting precise diagnosis of underground structures and hidden defects in urban roads. Therefore, understanding and overcoming these challenges is practically important for improving GPR performance and interpretive efficiency in urban road detection. To address these issues, this study proposes an innovative strategy using unsupervised learning for GPR image restoration. Specifically, it utilizes the Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Network (CycleGAN) with the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) generator and integrates the Multi-Scale Structural Similarity Index (MS-SSIM) loss function to enhance restoration quality. The method is trained and validated using field experimentally collected datasets with and without road surface interference, and the performance is evaluated through qualitative and quantitative analysis of restored GPR B-scan images. The experimental results show that the proposed method improves image restoration by 4.9% in SSIM, 39.15% in PSNR, and 76.88% in MAE, confirming its significant effect in GPR image restoration.

The underground detection environment in coal mines is complex, with numerous interference sources. Traditional ground-penetrating radar (GPR) methods suffer from limited detection range, high noise levels, and weak deep signals, making it extremely difficult to accurately identify geological structures without stable feature feedback. During research, it was found that the detection energy of the same target significantly changes with the antenna direction. Based on this phenomenon, this paper proposes a geological radar advanced detection method using spatial scanning. This method overcomes constraints imposed by the underground coal mine environment on detection equipment, enhancing both detection range and accuracy compared to traditional approaches. Experiments using this method revealed pea-shaped response characteristics of planar geological structures in radar images, and the mechanisms behind their formation were analyzed. Additionally, this paper studied the changes in response characteristics under changes in target inclination, providing a basis for understanding the spatial distribution of geological structures. Finally, application experiments in underground coal mine environments explored the practical potential of this method. Results indicate that, compared to drilling data, this method achieves identification accuracies of 91.88%, 90.42%, and 78.72% for the depth and spatial extent of geological structures, providing effective technical support for coal mining operations.

Drainage pipelines face significant threats to underground safety due to external defects. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a primary tool for detecting such defects from within the pipeline. However, existing methods are limited to single or multiple axial scan lines, which cannot provide the precise spatial coordinates of the defects. To address this limitation, this study introduces a novel GPR-based drainage pipeline inspection robot system integrated with multiple sensors. The system incorporates MEMS-IMU, encoder modules, and ultrasonic ranging modules to control the GPR antenna for axial and circumferential scanning. A novel Cross-Line Fusion of GPR (CLF-GPR) method is introduced to integrate axial and circumferential scan data for the precise localization of external pipeline defects. Laboratory simulations were performed to assess the effectiveness of the proposed technology and method, while its practical applicability was further validated through real-world drainage pipeline inspections. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves axial positioning errors of less than 2.0 cm, spatial angular positioning errors below 2°, and depth coordinate errors within 2.3 cm. These findings indicate that the proposed approach is reliable and has the potential to support the transparency and digitalization of urban underground drainage networks.

Coal mining faces critical challenges due to variable geological conditions that affect intelligent mining and safe production. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR), a high-resolution and non-destructive sensing technology, is essential for precise geological detection. However, underground electromagnetic interference, multiple reflections, and complex media significantly degrade the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), causing reflection signals to be obscured and geological interfaces to become blurred, thereby hindering accurate subsurface interpretation. Traditional denoising methods struggle to extract weak reflection signals under such complex noise conditions. To address these challenges, this study proposes a physics-guided conditional diffusion model that integrates physical constraints with deep learning to achieve intelligent denoising and weak-signal recovery for high-noise GPR data. Specifically, a dual-path GMM probabilistically models both feature signals and complex noise, while incorporating the wave equation ensures physical consistency with electromagnetic propagation. Experiments using a hybrid dataset combining field-measured noisy data and simulated features—evaluated using SSIM, PSNR, MAE, peak alignment, and structural continuity—demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms existing techniques in both noise suppression and signal reconstruction. Field tests in underground coal mines further confirm its practical applicability.

This study presents a clutter suppression algorithm for underground mine GPR B-scan profiles, integrating the Sparrow Search Algorithm (SSA), Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD), and image fusion via the Improved Non-Subsampled Shearlet Transform (INSST), aimed at addressing clutter under strict explosion-proof conditions. Initially, the raw B-scan data undergoes preprocessing to derive a grayscale profile. Using SSA, an envelope entropy fitness function is introduced to automatically optimize VMD with respect to the average trajectory of the grayscale profile. Finally, enhanced NSST processing is applied to the synthesized profile using a scale-direction adaptive threshold with an L ₂ norm square constraint and a flexible threshold function. This approach reduces Gibbs artifacts and oversmoothing while retaining valid signals within the threshold range. In simulated profiles, the proposed algorithm demonstrates strong robustness across different noise standard deviations, significantly improving image quality metrics such as Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM), while reducing the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). Notably, in measured mining profiles, the proposed algorithm outperforms eight other methods by better preserving edge details. Compared to the suboptimal algorithm, the Target-to-Noise Ratio (TNR) improves by 36% in mining fault profile I and by 17% in coal seam floor profile II. Finally, a sensitivity analysis of the proposed algorithm’s parameters was conducted.

During the interpretation of Borehole Radar (BHR) B-scan profiles, the accurate determination of the azimuth of geological targets in three-dimensional space is a critical issue for achieving precise anomaly localization and spatial structure inversion. However, existing directional BHR anomaly localization methods exhibit limited intelligence, insufficient adaptability to multi-site data, and weak generalization capability, rendering them inadequate for engineering applications under complex geological conditions. To address these challenges, a robust deep learning model, termed BSS-Pose-BHR, is developed based on YOLOv11n-pose for keypoint detection in directional BHR profiles. The model incorporates three key optimizations: Bi-Level Routing Attention (BRA) replaces Multi-Head Self-Attention (MHSA) in the backbone to improve computational efficiency; Conv_SAMWS enhances keypoint-related feature weighting in the backbone and neck; and Spatial and Channel Reconstruction Convolution (SCConv) is integrated into the detection head to reduce redundancy and strengthen local feature extraction, thereby improving suitability for keypoint detection tasks. In addition, a three-dimensional electromagnetic model of limestone containing a certain density of clay particles is established to construct a simulation dataset. On the simulated test set, compared with current mainstream deep learning approaches and conventional directional borehole radar anomaly localization algorithms, BSS-Pose-BHR achieves superior performance, with an mAP50(B) of 0.9686, an mAP50–95(B) of 0.7712, an mAP50(P) of 0.9951, and an mAP50–95(P) of 0.9952. Ablation experiments demonstrate that each proposed module contributes significantly to performance improvement. Compared with the baseline, BSS-Pose-BHR improves mAP50(B) by 5.39% and mAP50(P) by 0.86%, while increasing model weight by only 1.05 MB, thereby achieving a reasonable trade-off between detection accuracy and complexity. Furthermore, indoor physical model experiments validate the effectiveness of the method on measured data. Robustness experiments under different Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) conditions and varying missing-trace rates indicate that BSS-Pose-BHR maintains high detection accuracy under moderate noise and data loss, demonstrating strong engineering applicability and practical value.