• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.9-15
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• 2019

The purpose of present study is to assess the maximum width of the surface cracks using the histogram analysis of image processing techniques in concrete structures. For this purpose, the concrete crack image is acquired by the camera. The image is Grayscale coded and Binary coded. After Binary coded image is Dilate and Erode coded, the image is then recognized as separated objects by applying Labeling techniques. Over time, dust and stains may occur naturally on the surface of concrete. The crack image of concrete may include shadows and reflections by lighting depending on a surrounding conditions. In general, concrete cracks occur in a continuous pattern and noise of image appears in the form of shot noises. Bilateral Blurring and Adaptive Threshold apply to the Grayscale image to eliminate these effects. The remaining noises are removed by the object area ratio to the Labeled area. The maximum numbers of pixels and its positions in the crack objects without noises are calculated in x-direction and y-direction by Histogram analysis. The widths of the crack are estimated by trigonometric ratio at the positions of the pixels maximum numbers for the Labeled objects. Finally, the maximum crack width estimated by the proposed method is compared to the crack width measured with the crack gauge. The proposed method by the present study may increase the reliability for the estimation of maximum crack width using image processing techniques in concrete surface images.