Automated computer-vision-based defect detection has received much attention with the increasing surface quality assurance demands for the industrial manufacturing of flat steels. This paper attempts to present a comprehensive survey on surface defect detection technologies by reviewing about 120 publications over the last two decades for three typical flat steel products of con-casting slabs, hot- and cold-rolled steel strips. According to the nature of algorithms as well as image features, the existing methodologies are categorized into four groups: Statistical, spectral, model-based and machine learning. These literatures are summarized in this review to enable easy referral to suitable methods for diverse application scenarios in steel mills. Realization recommendations and future research trends are also addressed at an abstract level.

This paper proposes a multi-scale rotation-invariant haar-like (MSRI-HL) feature integrated convolutional neural network (MSRIHL-CNN)-based ship detection algorithm of the multiple-target environment in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. Usually, ship detection includes preprocessing, prescreening, discrimination, and classification. Among them, prescreening and discrimination are the most two important stages so that they catch great intention. Based on our previous work, we propose a truncated-clutter-statistics-based joint, constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detector (TCS-JCFAR) for ship target prescreening in the multiple-target environment. TCS-JCFAR greatly enhances the prescreening rate in the multiple-target environment while achieving a low observed FAR. In the discrimination stage, conventional CNN extracts the deep features (high-level features); however, it will lose the local texture and edge information (low-level features) which are of great significance for target discrimination. Hence, the MSRI-HL features are used to represent the multi-scale, rotation-invariant texture, and edge information that conventional CNN fails to capture. The extracted low-level MSRI-HL features and the high-level deep features are optimally fused to a multi-layered feature vector. Finally, the multi-layered feature vector is fed into a typical support vector machine (SVM) classifier for ship target discrimination. The proposed MSRIHL-CNN combines the low-level texture and edge features and the high-level deep features; moreover, they are optimally fused to fully represent the ship targets. Undoubtedly, MSRIHL-CNN has better discrimination performance. The superiority of the proposed TCS-JCFAR-based prescreener and MSRIHL-CNN-based discriminator is validated on the Chinese Gaofen-3 SAR imagery.

Efficient defect classification is one of the most important preconditions to achieve online quality inspection for hot-rolled strip steels. It is extremely challenging owing to various defect appearances, large intraclass variation, ambiguous interclass distance, and unstable gray values. In this paper, a generalized completed local binary patterns (GCLBP) framework is proposed. Two variants of improved completed local binary patterns (ICLBP) and improved completed noise-invariant local-structure patterns (ICNLP) under the GCLBP framework are developed for steel surface defect classification. Different from conventional local binary patterns variants, descriptive information hidden in nonuniform patterns is innovatively excavated for the better defect representation. This paper focuses on the following aspects. First, a lightweight searching algorithm is established for exploiting the dominant nonuniform patterns (DNUPs). Second, a hybrid pattern code mapping mechanism is proposed to encode all the uniform patterns and DNUPs. Third, feature extraction is carried out under the GCLBP framework. Finally, histogram matching is efficiently accomplished by simple nearest-neighbor classifier. The classification accuracy and time efficiency are verified on a widely recognized texture database (Outex) and a real-world steel surface defect database [Northeastern University (NEU)]. The experimental results promise that the proposed method can be widely applied in online automatic optical inspection instruments for hot-rolled strip steel.

The computer-vision-based surface defect detection of metal planar materials is a research hotspot in the field of metallurgical industry. The high standard of planar surface quality in the metal manufacturing industry requires that the performance of an automated visual inspection system and its algorithms are constantly improved. This paper attempts to present a comprehensive survey on both two-dimensional and three-dimensional surface defect detection technologies based on reviewing over 160 publications for some typical metal planar material products of steel, aluminum, copper plates and strips. According to the algorithm properties as well as the image features, the existing two-dimensional methodologies are categorized into four groups: statistical, spectral, model, and machine learning-based methods. On the basis of three-dimensional data acquisition, the three-dimensional technologies are divided into stereoscopic vision, photometric stereo, laser scanner, and structured light measurement methods. These classical algorithms and emerging methods are introduced, analyzed, and compared in this review. Finally, the remaining challenges and future research trends of visual defect detection are discussed and forecasted at an abstract level.

For a typical surface automated visual inspection (AVI) instrument of planar materials, defect classification is an indispensable part after defect detection, which acts as a crucial precondition for achieving the on-line quality inspection of end products. In the industrial environment of manufacturing flat steels, this task is awfully difficult due to diverse defect appearances, ambiguous intraclass and interclass distances. This paper attempts to present a focused but systematic review of the traditional and emerging automated computer-vision-based defect classification methods by investigating approximately 140 studies on three specific flat steel products of con-casting slabs, hot-rolled steel strips and cold-rolled steel strips. According to the natural image processing procedure of defect recognition, the diverse approaches are grouped into five successive parts: image acquisition, image preprocessing, feature extraction, feature selection and defect classifier. Recent literature has been reviewed from an industrial goal-oriented perspective to provide some guidelines for future studies, as well as to recommend suitable methods for boosting the surface quality inspection level of AVI instruments.

It is well-known that the convolutional neural network (CNN) is an effective method for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) target classification. In the convolutional layer of CNN, convolutional kernels of different sizes can extract different feature information of the target. The small-size kernel can extract the local texture feature information, and the large-size kernel can extract the global contour feature information. Traditional CNN methods usually use fixed-size kernels for convolution, and they generally lose part of the target’s feature information, resulting in the inaccurate classification of the SAR targets. This article proposes a novel CNN model based on multikernel-size feature fusion (MKSFF-CNN) for SAR target classification. MKSFF-CNN designs a convolutional methodology with a multichannel parallel topology, it uses convolutional kernels of different sizes to extract the multikernel-size deep features of the SAR target, and then, these features are fused in an optimal way to acquire the lowest loss. Moreover, MKSFF-CNN concatenates the fused features extracted by the convolutional layers of different dimensions to achieve the finest classification. MKSFF-CNN greatly elevates the feature representation completeness of the SAR targets so that more useful feature information can be exploited for SAR target classification. Undoubtedly, MKSFF-CNN can achieve a better classification performance compared with traditional CNN models with a fixed kernel size. The superiority of MKSFF-CNN is validated on the moving and stationary target acquisition and recognition (MSTAR) dataset with the detailed objective and subjective evaluation.