NOVEL SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATIC PAVEMENT DISTRESS DETECTION

By H. D. Cheng l and M. Miyojim2

ABSTRACT: Statistics published by the Federal Highway Administration indicate that maintenance and reha-
bilitation of highway pavements in the United States requires an expenditure of over $17 billion a year. In
conventional visual and manual pavement distress analysis approaches inspectors traverse roads and stop and
measure distress objects when they are found. Therefore. the conventional approaches are very costly. time
consuming. dangerous. labor intensive. tedious. subjective. have a high degree of variability. are unable to
provide meaningful quantitative information. and almost always lead to inconsistencies in distress detail over
space and across evaluations. In this paper. a new pavement distress image-enhancement algorithm and a new
analysis and classification algorithm are studied. The enhancement algorithm corrects nonuniform background
illumination by calculating multiplication factors that eliminate the background lighting variations. The new
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pavement distress classification algorithm builds a data structure storing the geometry of the skeleton obtained
from the thresholded image. This data structure is pruned. simplified. and aligned. yielding a set of features for
distress classification; the number of distress objects. number of branch intersections. number of loops. relative
sizes of branches in each direction. etc. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can
precisely quantify geometrical and topological parameters. quickly accept new classification rules for classifi-
cation. and accurately estimate the distress severity from the thresholded image.

INTRODUCTION
The detection of pavement distress on roads requires special
attention from transportation authorities in every state of the
United States and other countries relying on surface transpor-
tation.
Currently. pavement surface inspection is done visually by
persons who travel the highways watching for distressed areas.
stop when one is detected. and measure and record some pa-
rameters. Therefore. conventional visual and manual pavement
distress analysis approaches are very costly. time consuming.
dangerous. labor intensive. tedious. subjective. have a high
degree of variability. are unable to provide meaningful quan-
titative information. and almost always lead to inconsistencies
in distress detail over space and across evaluations.
Automated pavement distress analysis systems. especially
automated real-time pavement distress analysis systems. have
attracted more and more attention from transportation agencies
and researchers in the United States and abroad. Problems with
the existing automated distress detection systems/methods are:
(1) they require special devices (special lights. lasers. etc.).
which would increase cost and limit the application of the
systems/methods; (2) some systems have very low processing
speedllow accuracy; (3) they can only deal with certain kinds
of distresses. When dealing with several kinds of distresses.
the complexity of the systems will increase greatly or the sys-
tems cannot work.
Sobel edge detectors and the modified automatic threshold-
level determination method were employed to evaluate pave-
ment distress (Li et al. 1991). To connect the crack segments
forming a continuous cluster of object pixels. they relied on
the assumption that noise clusters had a perimeter of less than
20. A standard model was proposed to represent pavement
surfaces toward a unified and automated acquisition of key
characteristics for improving data quality (Haas and Hendrick-
son 1990). Laser ranging is executed within a subset of the
source image designated the area of interest. The laser ranging
'Assoc. Prof., Dept. of Compo ScL, Utah State Univ., Logan, UT
84322-4205.
2Eng., Digitran, Logan, UT 8434l.
Note. Discussion open until December I, 1998. To extend the closing
date one month, a written request must be filed with the ASCE Manager
of Journals. The manuscript for this paper was submitted for review and
possible publication on August 28, 1997. This paper is part of the Journal
ojComputtng in elvU Engineering, Vol. 12, No.3, July, 1998. @ASCE,
ISSN 0887-3801198/0003-0145-0152/$8.00 + $.50 per page. Paper No.
16517.
JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 1998/145
would corroborate or reject the vision data so that dark areas
not caused by pavement distress. such as tire marks, oil spill-
ings. shadows. and recent fillings. may be ruled out. The de-
velopment of a crack identification system using the laser
ranging technique was also reported (Walker and Harris 1991).
A machine vision system requiring laser ranging to overcome
the optical system shortcomings was declared (Velinsky and
Kirschke 1991). They used histogram analysis to identify
cracks on asphalt cement concrete pavement without present-
ing much detail on the difficulties encountered. Shadow moire
interferometry was used to measure coarse pavement distress.
such as abnormal elevations and big potholes by Guralnick et
al. (1993). This method allows for detection of areas of the
pavement that deviate from specified flatness criteria. The
shadow moire interferograms provide surface elevation varia-
tion measurements that cannot be obtained through ordinary
videotaping. They can detect severe road elevation deforma-
tions caused by heavy loads and potholes with undefined bor-
ders, which optical methods cannot detect. An approach to the
recognition of segmented pavement distress images was stud-
ied by Mohajeri and Manning (1991). It uses directional filters
to classify the cracks. The crack is longitudinal if there is a
high concentration of object pixels in a narrow interval of x
(transverse) coordinates; it is transverse if there is a high count
of object pixels in a narrow interval of y (longitudinal) coor-
dinates. However. it is not clear how to identify other crack
types by analyzing these counts. The importance of lighting
in determining the fraction of distress not detected by optical
means was pointed out by EI-Korchi et al. (1991). Several
lighting methods (controlled. natural, ambient. directional, om-
nidirectional. single-source, and multiple-source) were re-
searched. The conclusions are as follows: (1) high-quality
equipment and algorithms detect cracks more completely than
low-quality systems; (2) human vision has a low detection
threshold. so it may fail to detect many cracks. which explains
in part the subjectivity of human ratings; (3) sunlight and sky-
light lead to different levels of distress detection; (4) there are
low-contrast details that cannot be detected by an optical sys-
tem; (5) ambient light is better for crack detection than direct
sunlight; and (6) the worse the equipment and algorithms used.
the more important is lighting design for a higher crack de-
tection probability. A commercial distress measuring device
was described and compared with the traditional manual con-
dition survey by Lee (1991). Handmapping on grid paper the
distress of a section of pavement O.I-mile long requires 1 h.
according to the paper. There is not enough detail about the

J. Comput. Civ. Eng. 1998.12:145-152.

 image-processing methods used by the PAS 1 device devel-
oped by Pavedex, Inc. From the description of the results, it
appears that the PAS 1 device was not accurate, because it was
biased toward transverse cracking and could not detect all al-
ligator cracks. Another statistical approach was presented
(Koutsopoulos and Downey 1993) in which they recognized
the imperfections of segmentation that cause difficulty in dis-
tinguishing pavement distress types, especially between block
and alligator cracks. In this method, the original image is en-
hanced by subtracting an average of a few plain (nondistress)
images from the same series to compensate for the lighting
variations. Segmentation is done by assigning one out of four
values to each pixel, based on its probability of being an object
pixel. Classification is based on identifying primitives in the
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segmented image: blank, joint, linear segment, vertical, hori-
zontal, and diagonal. The distress is a block crack if it contains
a few joints with several horizontal and vertical primitives. It
is an alligator crack if it contains several joints and diagonal
primitives. Chou et al. (1995) employed a fuzzy filtering image
enhancement, fuzzy thresholding based on the maximum fuzzy
entropies, and classification through a neural network trained
with feature vectors as inputs. The components of feature vec-
tors used are the center of mass, orientation, bounding box,
best-fit ellipse, and eccentricity. A nonlinear equation cali-
brated from sample images is used to compensate for the
nonuniform illumination. Some of the sample images pre-
sented thresholding imperfections, probably because of an in-
adequate illumination correction. An effort by the Idaho Trans-
portation Department, assigned by VideoComp Corporation, to
automate the pavement distress data module was discussed by
Baker et al. (1987). A special vehicle was used to record 2,400
lane-miles of interstate highways and 380 lane-miles of prin-
cipal arterial highways. The team learned the following im-
portant facts about pavement image acquisition: (1) it is not
difficult to capture images on videotape at highway speeds,
even at times of heavy traffic; (2) image quality is better if
obtained during the night; (3) time and cost for data gathering
are not high; and (4) images captured on videotape possess
sufficient quality for later digitization and computer analysis.
A way to generate images on computers by combining ele-
ments of available real images (textures) with ray-traced sur-
faces to provide source images with specified distress patterns,
to avoid hunting for hard-to-find images was suggested by
Cheng and Miyojim (1996). A novel fuzzy logic approach to
pavement distress detection was described by Cheng et al.
(1996). They used a difference image to determine how much
darker the crack pixels were when compared with their sur-
roundings. The information was used to decide the member-
ship function. The connectivity was checked to eliminate small
segments, which were considered as noise. Automated real-
time pavement distress detection using fuzzy logic and neural
networks was studied (Cheng 1996). The proposed system
used fuzzy homogeneity for image enhancement and feature
extraction. The features will be input to a neural network for
classification.
SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
In this section, we present the image processing and pattern
recognition methods to detect and classify pavement distress
for which new algorithms have been implemented to fulfill the
goals of this research: image enhancement, skeleton analysis,
and pavement distress classification.
System Diagram
Fig. 1 shows a global view of the image capture, pavement
distress detection, classification, and severity determination
procedure.
146/ JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 1998
J. Comput. Civ. Eng. 1998.12:145-152.
Videotape Still
image
OD Image freeze
t~:,;:,
and format
PAVEMENT
DISTRESS DETECTION
Road trip AND CLASSIFICATION
FIG. 1. Global View of Pavement Dlstreea Claealflcatlon Activ-
Ities
An obstacle to automatic detection and classification of
pavement distress is that road pavement images are usually
obtained under nonuniform distributed lighting. To recognize
distress patterns with fidelity on the road surfaces, it is nec-
essary to first convert all source images to a standardized back-
ground lighting condition. The consequence of nonuniform il-
lumination is demonstrated in an experiment where the pixel
intensities of a computer-generated nonuniformly illuminated
background are multiplied individually by the corresponding
intensities of an equally computer-generated two-textured im-
age, which contains graphic information. The second compo-
nent image possesses a biomodal histogram that has a well-
defined valley between the modes (Gonzalez and Woods
1992). The histogram of the merged image is entirely different:
there is no clear separation of pixel intensities by a well-
marked valley. Most pavement distress images possess this
kind of intractable histogram.
New Image Enhancement Algorithm
The intensity matrix from an image with a pavement crack
contains three types of variations: (1) nonuniform background
illumination, a very low-frequency and fairly high-amplitude
signal; (2) pavement distress or nondistress irregularities
(stains or dark materials on surface), a high-amplitude and
strictly negative signal having high-frequency components on
the edges; (3) noise caused by heterogeneous materials and
granularity, a random, high-frequency, and a low- to medium-
amplitude signal. On variation of the first type, a continuous
function of light intensity with distance may be assumed, with
a continuous derivative. Assuming a still image extracted from
a videotape containing pavement distress, and that it is not
possible to illuminate the scenes uniformly, the pixel intensity
I(p), p = {x, y} may have the following composition:
](p) = ]b(P) + ].(p) + ]J..p)
where Ib(p) = background illumination signal; Id(p) = pave-
ment distress signal; and I.(p) represents the noise. To obtain
an image to be analyzed for pavement distress, the image is
thresholded. Because the image to be thresholded usually has
a high-amplitude Ib(p), it may hide the distress component I d
(p) so that wrong values are assigned to a large region in
which case the distress information will be lost and threshold-
ing will fail. To extract the distress information with fidelity
from the original image, it is necessary to convert the back-
ground function into a constant base intensity, arbitrarily cho-
sen in the gray-level range
]b(P) =B
 The I.(p) signal usually has an amplitude less than Id(p). From
the fact that I.(p) has random values uniformly distributed
around its average, whereas Id(p) is strongly negative, it is
possible to distinguish one from the other within the source
I(p) signal after elimination of the variable Ib(p). In other
words, converting Ib(p) to a constant has the virtue of reveal-
ing the distress signal, rendering the image ready for correct
thresholding.
The algorithm that removes the background illumination
uses statistical properties common to all pavement distress im-
ages. It considers the frame divided into rectangular windows
and starts the process by calculating the average light intensity
for all pixels in each of the windows. An image with varying
background illumination containing or not containing pave-
ment distress objects presents different average intensities for
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tection. For example, the sequence of average intensities
{... 190, 180, 150, 160, 155, 150, ... } is a monotonically
decreasing sequence, except for 150, which has 180 and 160
as neighbors. To remove the distress influence, the intensity
value 150 is replaced by 170, which is the average between
180 and 160. There is no need to correct the positive-going
distortions, because they do not affect the segmentation of the
image, unless they are very pronounced, such as when the
source image contains traffic-directing yellow or white lines
painted on the pavement.
Skeleton Analysis
Because of the variety of skeleton configurations possible,
a flexible and practical way of collecting and organizing the
information requires the analysis of the skeleton geometry. A

each window. Each average intensity is considered to be lo-
cated at the center of the corresponding window. Windows
containing distress objects possess low average intensities
when compared with the majority of windows without distress
objects. This may be better understood by examining Fig. 2.
Because the initial goal of the algorithm is to extract the back-
ground illumination pattern from the image under analysis, this
effect of pavement distress on the window averages must be
neutralized. For this purpose, as it proceeds along a row or
column and finds a sudden decrease in the average intensity
with respect to its neighbors, it will replace this low value by
the average value between the neighbors. This operation is
repeated throughout the length of all rows and columns of the
matrix of average intensities. Once this matrix is purged of
every distress intrusion, it is converted into a matrix of mul-
tipliers capable of pushing all intensity values to a common
base intensity B. This operation will have the effect of con-
verting the variable background intensity Ib(p) to the constant
B. Each window multiplier is calculated according to
data structure resembling the structure of skeletons to be an-
alyzed has been chosen. The data structure is a linked list of
PVDUs (pavement distress units), each pointing to a binary
tree of branches, which are groups of connected object pixels
terminating in the open background or intersecting other
branches. A pavement distress image may have one or more
PVDUs, each possessing one or more branches scattered in
the frame, intersecting each other, or forming loops. Fig. 3
presents a view of the data structure built during the analysis
of an image skeleton.
Light intensity
e Average
intensity
Noise spikes

B
M(p)=-
l(p) THRE$HOLD
All pixfls having
Assuming the existence of the sequence of window average intensi~es belo?-,
intensities {190, 180, 160, 145, 140}, let it be arbitrated that this thrfshold ~ill
the base intensity B = 160. Dividing the values in the sequence
by B, {1.19, 1.12, 1.00, 0.91, 0.88} is obtained. The goal of """"'" "''''I
the algorithm is to transform the image matrix into another in
which the background pixels present a unit ratio. This is
Pixel positions
achieved by generating multipliers that will be interpolated for
each pixel, so that all the matrix intensities will vary around FIG. 2. Windows Containing Pavement Distress Have Lower
B. In the numerical example, the balancing multiplier sequence Average Intensities
is {0.84, 0.89, 1.00, 1.10, 1.14}. However, because it is nec-
essary to obtain the background only, the distress areas must SKELETON ANALYSIS DATA STRUCTURE
be ignored at this stage. Only a smooth variation of the back-
ground should remain. As may be observed in Fig. 2, the back- Branch contains
ground line passes through the middle of the majority of noise N. transverse
swings, except for the distress region, where it should pass on N. longitudinal
the upper portion. To achieve this goal, the average intensities N. diagonal +
at fixed intervals over matrix windows are calculated. The win- N. diagonal -
dow average intensities thus obtained change from one fixed Total oriented pairs
interval to the next, without large increments or decrements, End point coorda.
such that they lie on the gently varying background illumi- Branch type
Pointers
nation curve represented by the thicker dashed line on Fig. 2.
parent
This second order continuity is only disturbed by the occur-
chUdren
rence of distress regions. If there are no disturbances in the
PVDU
sequence of averages, it is because there are no distress objects
in the image, only noise variations. Because the goal is to
extract the background and ignore the distress regions, the val-
ues that produce sudden changes in the sequence are replaced
by the averages between the neighboring values. The error
introduced by this simplification does not affect the quality of
the segmentation for extraction of the distress features required FIG. 3. Data Structure Containing Skeleton Outstanding Fea-
by the classification algorithm, as compared with visual de- tures

JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 1998/147

J. Comput. Civ. Eng. 1998.12:145-152.

 The current classification rule set for pavement distress has
been devised by various transportation departments to facili-
tate visual assessment by human inspectors. Quantification is
an area where computers perform far better than humans.
The implemented algorithm locates one end of a skeleton
and follows it through its neighbors until it reaches a branch-
ing point or an ending is found. At the branching points, the
algorithm proceeds recursively; as it proceeds, it changes the
gray level of the current object pixel, which is black from
thresholding (level 0), to a gray shade, named gray1. The pa-
rameters of a simply connected set of object pixels (a branch)
are stored in branch nodes.
When the pavement distress is complex, it sometimes con-
tains loops in the skeletons. When the loops are relatively
large, they certainly belong to a variety of distress known as
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used to preserve the structure of the binary tree. By construc-
tion of the data structure, there is no danger of the algorithm
going into an infinite computational loop.
In a general case, it is desirable to identify branches be-
longing to the same approximately straight line, so the set may
be classified as a single longitudinal, transverse, or diagonal
crack. Hough's transform can tell whether a pixel given by its
coordinates belongs to a given straight line. After extracting
and simplifying all branches within a PVDU, all relevant data
of each surviving branch are reachable in the corresponding
binary tree. If there is more than one approximate straight line
in different directions, their theoretical intersection point is
determined. If the theoretical intersection lies within the limits
of each branch, then the algorithm searches the binary tree
again, locating by proximity the exact intersection coordinates

the alligator crack. An alligator crack contains a multitude of in the skeleton. This is to confirm the existence of intersections
disconnected cracks, some of which may be looped, having a for classification purposes. A similar procedure is repeated
similar general orientation, resembling the cuirass of an alli- among all single-branch PVDUs in an attempt to identify bro-
gator; hence the name. Fig. 4 shows a typical topology of a ken lines, i.e., those with imperfections in the original image
loop in the skeleton under analysis, in this case a simple skel- that separated their skeletons. All PVDUs ending up in a single
eton containing a total of five branches, three of which form aligned group are simplified into a single PVDU. After these
a loop. The numbered arrows represent the temporal sequence integration steps, the remaining short ones are identified as
in which the pixels will be traversed by the algorithm. noise and may finally be discarded with confidence, because
The function starts at the top leftmost object pixel. It reads they will not harm the fidelity of the captured data.
each object pixel that is connected to the current pixel. For all
object pixels down to the one labeled A, the branch is O. Each Quantification
of them has a single neighbor. When the algorithm comes to
pixel A, the algorithm finds two neighbor pixels, B and C. Once the data structure is built and filled with data for the
When this occurs, the function recourses for the two new skeleton under analysis, the outstanding features must be
branches. Before the recursive processes are deployed, the counted from the structure. For the current implementation,
starting pixels are given a distinctive value, for future refer- the following features are counted:
ence. The next branch to be processed is I. With the algorithm
at pixel D two recursions take place, for neighbors E and F. 1. Number of PVDUs directly obtained from the PVDU
Branch 2 is a terminal branch, therefore it reaches the end, head structure.
and the depth 2 re.cursion returns, initiating branch 3. It then 2. Number of loops with significant perimeters (arbitrated
consumes all pixels of branch 3, reaching pixel G. It recourses as 1/12 of the image perimeter).
and processes the pixels of branch 4, starting at pixel I. Branch 3. Count of transversely oriented pairs for all PVDUs and
4 is unique, because it ends up meeting pixel C, which now its proportion in the total.
has gray level gray2. Pixel C is the closure of the loop {4,1,3 }, 4. Count of longitudinally oriented pairs for all PVDUs and
so branch 1 is connected as a child of branch 4. Then comes its proportion in the total.
the turn of branch 5, starting at pixel H. Finally, the depth 1 5. Count of diagonally oriented pairs for all PVDUs, both
recursion starting at pixel C is executed and the corresponding positive and negative slope, and its proportion in the to-
node is deleted, because all its pixels have been already con- tal.
sumed by branch 4. This is the mechanism that enables the 6. Total count of oriented pairs for all PVDUs with pro-
analysis algorithm to identify and record a loop in the skeleton. portion equal to unit.
When an object pixel has three neighbors, a dummy node is
These parameters are the most significant ones, but if neces-
sary, there are other features that may be added to the list. One
good candidate for addition is a measure of the crookedness
A LOOP IN THE
SKELETON
of branches and PVDUs, which may be obtained from ratios
between the basic oriented pair counts. If this parameter is
added to the branch and PVDU nodes, then intersections
would only be meaningful among straight branches (with min-
imum crookedness).

Distress Classification
Experimentally, the classification algorithm uses the follow-
ing general rules.

1. If there are only a few independent significant PVDUs

with no loops the distress is composed of a simple crack,
longitudinal, transverse, or diagonal, depending on
global orientation. For example, an image having a high
proportion of branches in the longitudinal direction is
classified as a longitudinal crack, even if there are a few
other shorter branches or PVDUs with other orientations.
2. If there are no loops, but numerous PVDUs, then the
FIG. 4. Diagram of Loop In Skeleton of Dletre88 Image distress is an alligator crack.
148/ JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 1998

J. Comput. Civ. Eng. 1998.12:145-152.

 3. If there are one or more large loops, then the distress is
also an alligator crack.
4. If there are no loops, but the PVDUs intersect each other Number of PVDUs
at two or more points, then the distress is a block crack. Number of loops
5. If there are no loops and there is a single intersection, Number of PAVEMENT
or there are both longitudinal and transverse components intersections
with significant lengths (more than 35% each of the total Sizes of branches DISTRESS I-- Distress
length of skeletons in the image), then the distress is a in each direction
class
combination crack. Proportions of branches
in each direction CLASSIFIER
The rules are tentative, because a clearly quantified classi-
fication rule set is not available at this time. The classes above Other features
are fuzzy in nature, so it is sometimes unclear exactly what
parameter values mark the end of one class and the beginning
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of another, just as it is difficult to visually classify certain cases

as alligator or block cracks. When clearly quantified defini- FIG. 5. Inputs to Classifier
tions of each class of pavement distress are available, the rules
above may be modified accordingly.
In Fig. 5, the features used in the current implementation
as inputs for the classifier are shown, together with those that
may be added in the future, represented as other features.

Distress Extent Calculation

To measure the severity of the distress, the ratio between
the total area of the distress and the total area of the image is
calculated. The total distress area is obtained by counting the
number of object pixels in the thresholded image, after noise
removal and morphological closing, whereas the total image
area is given by the total number of pixels in the source image.
The resulting fraction is a reasonable approximation of the
severity of the pavement distress in question.

Thresholding
For this operation to be performed satisfactorily on the en-
hanced image a threshold for the intensities needs to be de-
termined, so that all pixels below the threshold will be as-
signed the minimum gray level 0, whereas all other pixels will
be assigned the maximum gray level 255. The newly devel-
oped enhancement algorithm assigns gray levels to the en-
hanced image with relatively small variations above or below
the base intensity B in the noise regions, and significantly
larger variations below B in the distress regions. In addition,
it has been noticed that the intensity variations surrounding
distress objects are very steep. Also, source images with high
contrast contain noise with a larger amplitude than those with
low contrast. Consequently, highly contrasted images present
larger standard deviations for their light intensity distributions.
Experimentation confirmed that an adequate threshold value is
obtained by the expression
T=B - cr
where cr = standard deviation of the gray levels in the en-
hanced image.
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Many experiments have been carried out using the proposed
algorithms. Several different distress source images have been
generated by magnifying, reducing, or rotating interesting im-
ages from an original videotape.
Image Enhancement
A typical preprocessed image that needs to be enhanced as
a preparation for thresholding is shown in Fig. 6. Thresholding
was attempted by means of the histogram fuzzy entropy
method (Li et al. 1994; Li et al. 1995), which determines the
optimum threshold level for a wide range of situations. How-
JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 1998/149
FIG. 6. Selected Source Image after Preprocessing
ever, the fuzzy entropy method cannot handle nonuniform il-
lumination, Le., it requires a fair separation of statistically nor-
mal modes on the histogram between the background and the
objects. The fuzzy entropy method supplies the optimum
threshold value if the source image is acquired under a uni-
form illumination.
A general approach to illumination correction was necessary
to obtain a satisfactory thresholding. The effect of the back-
ground should somehow be eliminated. Based on principles
learned from early experiments, a general method of enhance-
ment to approximate the goal was derived. Its action may be
observed from the variation of gray levels along a row of a
typical source pavement distress image (Fig. 7) into the one
shown in Fig. 8. Fig. 7 clearly shows why the high amplitude
of the background intensity variation is capable of hiding all
the information contained in the smaller swings of intensities
among neighboring pixel clusters.
The result from the enhancement of the image of Fig. 6 by
the interpolated multipliers method is shown in Fig. 9.
Image Thresholding
The interpolated multipliers enhancement algorithm gener-
ates an image matrix where all gray levels vary around a con-
stant base level B, and the remaining variations are due to
either noise or pavement distress. During the experiments, it
was observed that a threshold value of the base value minus
the standard deviation, cr, produced visually correct results in

J. Comput. Civ. Eng. 1998.12:145-152.

 ..' ,.'.': .....--"..'V...."", It ,,',.,.
Row 171 from Original Test Pavement Image _I,. '" -. '.
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r .. - ,-' , "," , .

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~~ /~. . I . . 'O'.~ ~
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, ... ri.,
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f ..
4 • .' •
4
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.<: 150 l.~' ) " .. ., ~~,I 'i ~
6 ••.' r:.L ',: ~ I '. ..." 1"
\......, II .f .... •
I•
:e I
. , . . . f· •• '.' r
4~"1
r. . •
Of"
-ib
r:tt·.· ~.. .'., · J r·,· . . r··' ~' ~....
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• ,..... .. I ",. - I.' .,

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... • ~. ~l;.~ ~. 1':·'I ~.J' j'~• • " ',•. ° r
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,"~t'
\ Jr. I~ . 1.1 ••
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Horizontal Pixel Position Indices •" It.• ~. • " •• ' II- '" ~.

~. 01. ~ ".. : , , "

, 41 ••,' ~. , 'I"

~.",'!t.'
'", " .4'1: {~ i (../: '~1:,', , :' r
FIG. 7. Variation of Light Intensity along Row of Image with
Distress
•

.
' , ' ,.-

- .... ' "

. • I

4,,_ • •
~
~

250
Row 171 from Test Pavement Image after Enhancement
"):/'
. ...... ,.••. ~

FIG. 10. Thresholded Image from Fig. 9

200

alligator crack with a dark right side from the enhancement

rJ executed by means of the interpolated multipliers method.
:ta 150

j 100
Analysis, Classification, and Severity
-ib After building the data structure containing the parameters
:.::l representing the skeleton read on input and executing the nec-
50
essary simplifications, this algorithm implementation outputs
a summary analysis report containing the outstanding param-
0
0 50 100 150 ~QQ 2'0 300 eter values leading to the distress classification.
Horizontal Pixel Position Indices
Example Report
FIG. 8. Variation of Light Intensity after Removing Back-
ground Variation For the alligator crack taken as an example throughout this
section the algorithm provided the following results:

Number of PVDUs: 21
Number of loops: o
Number of intersections: 11

Accumulated lengths in oriented pairs:

Orientation Length %

Longitudinal: 1,275 74.6

Transverse: 180 10.5
Diagonals: 255 14.9

Total: 1,710 100.0

Classification: Alligator Crack

Number of object pixels in thresholded image: 27,466
Area of frame in pixels: 234,278
Ratio of distress pixels for this frame = 27,466/234,278
Distress Extent over Total Area: 11.7%.

Note that if we want to compute the areas covered by an

FIG. 9. Image of Fig. 6 after Enhancement
all cases. The majority of the distress images studied had (J'
equal to approximately 20. With the base intensity of 180 used,
the threshold of 160 provided good results in all cases. On the
other hand, one exceptional image scanned from a still pho-
tograph taken on a sunny day from a close range presented (J'
= 46, and any threshold higher than 180 - 46 = 134 caused
an excessive level of noise in the thresholded image.
Fig. 10 presents the result of thresholding the image of an
150/ JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 1998
alligator crack, we may find the left-most crack pixel and the
right-most crack pixel on each row. The area will be the seg-
ment between these pixels. Then we can add the segments of
all rows and obtain the total areas covered by the alligator
crack.
Forty-two reports similar to the aforementioned example
have been obtained, all presenting the correct classification
according to the visual assessment. Some of the cracks are
thin and optically ill-defined, yet the classification is correct.
Some of the more interesting source images have been reused
to generate new source images. For instance, a new source

J. Comput. Civ. Eng. 1998.12:145-152.

 image was obtained by magnifying a part of the alligator crack
exemplified in the figures to 125% of its original size, a second
new source image by reducing the original image to 75% of
its size, and still another by rotating the original image by 90
degrees. Among the distress images classified as transverse
cracks were those containing a few more distress objects than
the dominant transverse crack. These are consequences of a
design decision to account for the fuzziness of the issue, not
misclassifications, because visually they did not appear com-
plex enough to justify being classified as alligator cracks.
These are cases about which even the experts might disagree
among themselves. In the experiments, a crisp threshold value
was used for the number of PYDUs to distinguish compound
transverse cracks from simple alligator cracks, instead of the
usual fuzzy approach used by humans. The same comment is
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applicable to the longitudinal and diagonal cracks. What
should be emphasized is not the experimental classification
results, but the fact that the algorithm specifies parameters that
may be adjusted to make its decisions match the experts' opin-
ions. Once these adjustments are made, the classification al-
gorithm will behave as expected in all limiting cases. In other
words, the automatic classification will not be worse than hu-
man classification in the cases where ambiguity arises.
The algorithm correctly classifies all cases that are within
typical parameters: simple cracks (transverse, longitudinal, and
diagonal) and complex cracks (block, alligator). For cases not
clearly within any of those typical situations, however, there
are no qualified rules on which to base a decision, because the
current visually based standards are fuzzy. This is exactly what
causes ambiguity in the classification, allowing subjective in-
terpretations to come into play. The proposed algorithm is ca-
pable of quantifying many geometric features outside the cur-
rent list; those features have not been measured in the current
implementation because there is no need for them. This pre-
sents an opportunity to introduce some new classes that will
contain cases presently unqualifiable under the visual stan-
dards. The algorithm could additionally measure, for example,
the degree of crookedness of the branches and PYDUs to spec-
ify more clearly what an alligator crack is supposed to be. It
could assign a class to cases where there are two longitudinal
extensive cracks or three transverse cracks, for instance, be-
cause at present it would be necessary to consider such cases
as either simple or alligator cracks. Therefore, incomplete vi-
sual standards account for some uncertainty in the design of
this classifier, which is capable of assigning the correct class
to any case that is input, provided the class delimiters are
defined.
Despite the fact that combination cracks are a subset of
block cracks, they have been separately classified in the ex-
periments to test the ability of the algorithm to accept addi-
tional classes defined by stringent conditions. Experimentation
~howed that the algorithm has this capability. In the same way,
It could be modified to classify "rutting," which is a kind of
distress having several longitudinal cracks concentrated on
both sides of the pavement. To classify rutting, the quantifier
would require a counter of longitudinal PYDUs with holders
for the Hough transform p variable in order to distinguish rut-
ting from alligator cracks. In the current classifier implemen-
tation, the rutting cracks are included in the alligator crack
class.
Experiment Summary
Table 1 summarizes the test results with the classification
algorithm. An open approach such as the proposed classifier
has a powerful appeal, because it quantifies features from the
source image in a manner understandable to the distress man-
agement personnel. It may be adapted to recognize new in-
serted classes by adjusting its class delimiters and may also
JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 1998/151
J. Comput. Civ. Eng. 1998.12:145-152.
TABLE 1. Distreas Classification Results
Number of Error Accuracy
Crack type cases (0/0) (0/0)
(1 ) (2) (3) (4)
Transverse 10 0 100
Longitudinal 8 0 100
Diagonal 2 0 100
Combination 7 0 100
Block 7 0 100
Alligator 8 0 100
Total 42 0 100
be completely converted to a new set of rules by rewriting the
small and accessible classification algorithm code, maintaining
unchanged the more complex skeleton analysis algorithm.
The same flexibility does not occur for neural networks,
because the reason for misclassification is not clearly recog-
nizable. To increase the correct classification rate of a neural
network it is necessary to input more training images with the
expected classification, but it is difficult to define the minimum
number of training images to accomplish this goal.
CONCLUSION
In this section we describe the advantages and limitations
of the new algorithms for enhancement, analysis, and classi-
fication of pavement distress images. Also, the additional re-
search and development efforts necessary to complete an au-
tomated PMS (Pavement Management System) are presented.
Advantages and Limitations
A statistical thresholding method assumed that object and
background gray-level values were normally distributed
(Kittler and IIlingwoth 1986). The proposed enhancement
method is better because it eliminates the nonuniform back-
ground illumination without assuming any particular statistical
distribution for the source image gray levels. In the statistical
approach (Koutsopoulos and Downey 1993), the source image
was enhanced by subtracting an average of a few plain (non-
distress) images from the same set of images. Such an illu-
mination correct method may introduce distortion and noise in
~e .enh~c~d image, which is why they reported difficulty in
dlstmgulshmg a block from an alligator crack. The new en-
hancement algorithm is better because it uses information from
the source image itself, not depending on other images of the
set, so that the enhanced image will be faithful to the source
image. The candidate pixel cluster perimeters were measured
to distinguish noise clusters from object clusters (Li et al.
1991). Distinguishing clusters by size is safe only when no
noise clusters lie close to the object and the noise clusters are
significantly small when compared with the distress clusters.
~e ad~antage of the proposed enhancement algorithm is that
It effectively separates background and noise from the distress
portions of the source image, reducing the noise presence in
the thresholded image to a minimum. When compared with
the approach to the recognition of segmented pavement dis-
tress images using directional filters for crack classification
(Moha~eri and Manni~g 1991), the advantages of the proposed
extraction of geometncal features from the image skeleton are
its capability to quantify distress features in terms of under-
standing parameters (lengths, numbers of intersections, loops,
PYDUs, etc.) and its ability to classify the source image based
on such quantities. A fuzzy filtering image enhancement was
used to classify distress through a neural network (Chou et al.
1995). An image-independent nonlinear equation is used to
correct the nonuniform illumination. The proposed enhance-
ment algorithm has the advantage of relying on the source
 image alone to extract the features, so there are no distortions
caused by extraneous images. On the other hand, moment in-
variants were used as features, which may have similar values
for a wide range of orientations, in a case a distress object is
wide and short (Chou et al. 1995). The proposed skeleton anal-
ysis algorithm is more specific and precise, because the skel-
eton for an object with a given orientation is unique for a wide
range of aspect ratios (thicknesses), so that there is no ambi-
guity in the detected orientation. In addition, neural networks
do not clearly show how their decisions are made after train-
ing. The advantage of the proposed skeleton analysis algorithm
is that the distress orientations are clearly determined from the
object geometric features. Its classification rules are stated in
easily understandable terms such as branches and PVDUs,
number of loops, number of intersections, and proportions of
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branch sizes in longitudinal, transverse, or diagonal orienta-
tions. Another advantage of this algorithm is that its rules are
open to developers and users of the system, and are modifiable
to suit the requirements set by pavement managers. Zee (1991)
described how imprecise the PAS 1 pavement distress mea-
suring device was when compared with the manual condition
survey results. Although the article did not provide details
about the image processing tools used by PAS 1, its limitations
were most probably caused by the nonuniform background
illumination in the images analyzed. Because of the presence
of background effects, PAS 1 could not capture the distress
signals faithfully, resulting in a preferential direction (trans-
verse), poor detection of alligator cracks, and poor repeatabil-
ity. The proposed algorithms have the advantage of removing
the effect of the background illumination so that repeated im-
age acquisition of the same section of pavement at different
time of day or illumination conditions can render similar thres-
holded images, resulting in consistent classifications for all the
repetitions. Also, the new algorithms are not direction biased
and can clearly distinguish alligator cracks from longitudinal
and transverse cracks.
Limitations of the new algorithms are as follows: (1) they
do not distinguish legitimate cracks from other optical effects
that optically resemble cracks; (2) they cannot detect pavement
distress that causes gentle variations of light reflections, such
as roadbed elevation distortions, certain potholes, etc.
Future Research
The following are complementary research tasks concerning
an automatic PMS:
1. Combine the proposed optical enhancement and analysis
algorithms with existing laser ranging or moire interfer-
ence subsystems to overcome the current limitations and
obtain complete image acquisition, processing, and clas-
sification methods.
2. Experiment with the following method to remove non-
uniform background lighting. a. Obtain the Fourier trans-
form of the image. b. Filter out the very low frequencies.
c. Transfer to the space domain d. Compare the quality
of the enhancement with the proposed enhancement al-
gorithm.
Contributions
This research contributes the following components for a
practical automated PMS:
1. A new image enhancement algorithm that provides illu-
152/ JOURNAL OF COMPUTING IN CIVIL ENGINEERING / JULY 1998
J. Comput. Civ. Eng. 1998.12:145-152.
mination correction of the background to make faithful
thresholding of a wide variety of pavement distress
source images feasible without requiring them to possess
special statistical qualifications. It can also accumulate
the task of segmenting the image as it executes the en-
hancement.
2. A new algorithm for pavement distress image analysis,
quantification, and classification, using the skeletons of
the thresholded image. The algorithm is open to added
functionality and updating of the classification rules
based on topological and geometrical parameters under-
standable by both PMS developers and users.
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