title: Defect detection in slab surface: a novel dual Charge-coupled Device imaging-based fuzzy connectedness strategy.
abstract: To provide an accurate surface defects inspection system and make the automation of robust image segmentation method a reality in routine production line, a general approach is presented for continuous casting slab (CC-slab) surface defects extraction and delineation. The applicability of the system is not tied to CC-slab exclusively. We combined the line array CCD (Charge-coupled Device) traditional scanning imaging (LS-imaging) and area array CCD laser three-dimensional (3D) scanning imaging (AL-imaging) strategies in designing the system. Its aim is to suppress the respective imaging system's limitations. In the system, the images acquired from the two CCD sensors are carefully aligned in space and in time by maximum mutual information-based full-fledged registration schema. Subsequently, the image information is fused from these two subsystems such as the unbroken 2D information in LS-imaging and 3D depressed information in AL-imaging. Finally, on the basis of the established dual scanning imaging system the region of interest (ROI) localization by seed specification was designed, and the delineation for ROI by iterative relative fuzzy connectedness (IRFC) algorithm was utilized to get a precise inspection result. Our method takes into account the complementary advantages in the two common machine vision (MV) systems and it performs competitively with the state-of-the-art as seen from the comparison of experimental results. For the first time, a joint imaging scanning strategy is proposed for CC-slab surface defect inspection that allows a feasible way of powerful ROI delineation strategies to be applied to the MV inspection field. Multi-ROI delineation by using IRFC in this research field may further improve the results.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Materials and Metallurgy, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400030, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Liming
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Institute of Smart System and Renewable Energy, College of Automation, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400030, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Ouyang
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Materials and Metallurgy, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400030, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Dengfu
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Medical Image Processing Group, Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, 423 Guardian Drive, Blockley Hall, 4th Floor, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
authors.forename: Jayaram K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Udupa
authors.affiliation: ICT Research Center, Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Technology and System of the Education Ministry of China, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Huiqian
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Smart System and Renewable Energy, College of Automation, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400030, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yuebin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zeng
mesh_terms: D008962:Models, Theoretical; D013499:Surface Properties