2D IMAGE BASED ROAD PAVEMENT CRACK DETECTION BY CALCULATING
MINIMAL PATHS AND DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING
Manuel AVILA(1), Stéphane BEGOT(1), Florent DUCULTY(1), Tien Sy NGUYEN(2)
(1) PRISME Laboratory, University of Orleans, France, (2) Vectra road engineering, www.vectra.fr
Email: manuel.avila@univ-orleans.fr
ABSTRACT
Road distress needs to be detected early to optimize road
maintenance cost; automatic survey of road distress is a big
challenge, particularity for the detection of tiny cracks due
to important variation of pavement textures. This paper
presents a new method for crack detection by finding the
minimal path passing on each pixel of image from every
path with a length d; we propose also a dynamic
programming implementation to make it applicable in real
condition. Methods are tested on synthesis images set and a
large set of real images. Results show that cracks as small as
2mm could be detected.
Keywords — road distress, crack, detection, dynamic
programming
1. INTRODUCTION
From more than two decades, there is a growing interest in
pavement defect detection using image processing
techniques [1]. Crack detection on pavement surfaces is a
difficult problem due to the noisy rate of the pavement
surfaces relative to crack size. There are different kinds of
texture that can be encountered on road pavements. Cracks
can have many forms; crack size can be as small as 1 pixel
in width and thinner than inter-aggregate distance. Figure 1
illustrates some pavement image samples.
Figure 1: pavement image samples: (a) longitudinal
crack, (b) transversal crack, (c) alligator crack.
After this introduction, in the part 2, we propose a short
review of recent works. Our minimal path method is
detailed in the part 3. The Free Form Anisotropy (FFA)
based on this minimal path is defined in part 4. Different
tests and results are proposed in part 5. Then we conclude.
2. RELATED WORK
In the last years, many works dealing with analysis of road
pavement surface have been proposed. The advance in
technologies like dynamic image capturing, laser
illuminating or high capacity to store huge amount of data
978-1-4799-5751-4/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 783
provide development of apparatus like AMAC© [2] in
Europe or ARAN [3] in North America. These apparatus
collect images and various features of road pavement
surface. Transversal or lengthways profiles are collected. It
is a mix of all these information that provide the diagnosis
used to program maintenance of the road [4].
We focus, in this work, on the detection of crack defect
on images that have these following characteristics [1], [5]:
- Intensity: crack pixels are darker than their neighbours,
- Geometry: crack is continuous or could be composed of
several continuous segments. Its length is greater than its
width and to the granulate size.
These characteristics could be noised by the road texture
typically when they are considered separately, for example,
pixels between granulate can be as dark as a crack pixel.
Recent publications propose literature review of crack
detection methods [6], [7]. Most simple methods use
intensity thresholding to segment crack image, fixed
threshold in [8], [9] or fuzzy threshold in [10]. The
segmentation results then are followed by various post-
processing to filter-out noises. Neighbourhood is considered
in [11], [12] or 2D Continuous Wavelet Transform in [13].
In [6], a region based filtering is used in segmentation
step. The database containing about 100 images is
automatically split into two subsets used for training or for
tests. Six unsupervised classifiers are used with features
extracted on each region. Finally, results are given on test
database with qualification of detected crack (three levels)
to respond to local road administration.
In [7], authors propose a method with a geodesic
shadow-removal algorithm. Then a local intensity-difference
measure is used for crack pixel detection. This measure used
the 8-connected neighbourhood of the pixel. It mixes
intensity and geometrical features of crack. To increase this
mixing, a tensor voting method is used to connect crack
pixels and to filter the others. Finally, results are presented
on a set of 200 images.
In the next part, we propose a method that takes into
account simultaneously intensity and crack geometry
features for segmentation step.
3. MINIMAL PATH
3.1. Image Model: Weighted graph
An image can be modelled as a graph. So, this image can be
considered as set of nodes (pixels) that are weighted by
pixel intensity.
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 Neighbourhood defines the set of edges that can be
connected to a node. Instead of considering a classical 8-
connected neighbourhood, we chose a 4-connected oriented
neighbourhood (Figure 2) that provide an oriented graph.
Input: G = <N, A> oriented weighted graph, modelling
image through one direction.

is a matrix with as many
nodes as pixels of the inspected image. Each node need to
be determined nearest neighbours at a distance from 0 to d
and their weights:
Nl : {weight[0..d]; NearestNeighbour[0..d]}.
A defines oriented neighbours.
Output: Matrix

fill with minimal path from Nl with
length 0…d for all nodes,




(with Nl the node
corresponding to pixel l).

Algorithm 1: Searching minimal path

Figure 2: Neighbourhood for oriented graph. 1. Procedure SearchMinimalPath
2. Input: G = <N, A>
3.2. Definition of minimal path 3.


According to image model previously proposed, a minimal 4. Output:


path is defined as a path for which sum of pixel intensities is 5. Set

for each node





:
the smallest in every path passing by a considered pixel with 6.
















a length d. 7.














A minimal path is composed of 2-oriented graphs 8. For length k from 1 to d do
(Figure 3). This choice prevents the algorithm against path’s 9. For each node





do
loopback. 10. Search neighbour














which has the minimum weight for length k-1 :
11. 



















12. Update


:
13.





















14.













15. End For Each
16. End for length
Figure 3: Sample of minimal path merged with 17. End procedure
2-oriented graphs.
4. FREE-FORM ANISOTROPY
For each pixel of the image, we found four minimal paths Free-Form anisotropy is computed by using minimal paths,
with help of 4-oriented graphs (Figure 4), which can be used which have been selected by dynamic programming. For
to compute Free-Form Anisotropy [14]. each minimal path extracted for the four orientations (Figure
4), features are calculated and converted into sources using
possibility theory [16] (Figure 5). Source πi is composed of
mean μi and standard deviation σi of pixel intensities of a
minimal path.

Figure 4: Minimal paths of pixel l according to four

orientations: (a) transversal, (b) longitudinal, (c)
diagonal 135°, (d) diagonal 45°.

h(π1 , π 2 ) = sup{min (π1 , π 2 )} (4.1)

Our minimal path is different from Dijkstra path [15] that
finds the path with minimal cost between two points
regardless to their length. In our case, the minimal path is
defined from the centre pixel towards two unknown
extremities at a fixed distance d. This path is supposed to be
a crack path when the centre pixel is a cracking pixel.
3.3. Algorithm: Searching minimal path
Figure 5: Sup-min function to evaluate degree of
coherence between two sources.
To avoid a learning step for backgrounds estimation, we
suppose that crack affects texture only in one orientation.
Then we can use, for the background source, πmax the
minimal path that has the maximum weight.
Considering crack characteristics and definition of

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minimal path, we observe that (for samples in Figure 6): the method to filter the background and enhance crack. In a
- if pixel l is part of a crack, the crack is one of second test, we compare results of our method with one
the oriented minimal paths (Figure 6a), this one developed in France with the same kind of images. Then we
that has the minimal weight πmin, give some results on a database composed of more than
- if pixel l is a defect-free pixel, variation 16.000 images captured on highways of French road
between weight of minimal paths is smaller network.
than in previous case (Figure 6c).
5.1. Tests on synthetic cracks
Different kinds of pavement images have been used. In
Table 1, we see textures attributes for each kind of texture:
granulate size, contrast. The two last parameters are
Haralick attributes [17].
Image Granulate size Contrast Correlation Entropy
(mm)min/max
1 0/4 308.1 0,001 8,7
2 0/10 537,3 0,0005 9,38
3 0/13 612,4 0,0032 9,4
4 0/18 876,72 0,00031 9,9
Table 1: Texture attributes of selected images.
On these images (Figure 7), we generate synthetic cracks.
Crack pixels intensities were randomly chosen in a range
near crack pixel intensity. Cracks have “no segment” forms.

Figure 6: FFA computed for 2 pixels with d = 30. (a,b)

crack pixel (c,d) defect-free pixel.
The FFA of a pixel l can be formulated as:













(4.2) Figure 7: Synthetic cracks on different kinds of
πmin and πmax are found comparing weight of the four pavement images.
minimal paths (Figure 6) with pixel l at the centre of the In Figure 8, we see FFA results for two distances d=4 or
path with (2*d+1) length. We are not able to compute the d=32. In each case, all cracks are fully detected. If this
distance d but this distance must be chosen larger than the distance is too small, FFA is not able to filter background.
granulate size but not too high to avoid burdening the The distance must be higher than granulate size to obtain an
calculations. efficient filtering. If distance d is high enough, there is no
The FFA measure is close to 1 for crack pixels and close noise detection. The method is able to perform background
to 0 for defect-free pixels. In Figure 6a, we see that the free- suppression for different kinds of textures. This
form path follows the crack. Figure 6b illustrates the demonstrates the robustness of the method.
coherence degree value produced by the crack pixel (h=0.09
so FFA(l)=0.91). This shows the ability of FFA to explore
with accuracy different crack forms.
Without crack, the minimal paths produce sources with
high correlation level (Figure 6d).

5. RESULTS
Perform objective tests to compare different methods, with
different datasets, is a difficult task. Differences between
administrations, in different countries of Europe or between
continents, induce different goals for developments. Due to
difficulties (for example costs) to have access to high Figure 8: FFA results on different kinds of pavement
resolutions images of road pavement, it is not easy to images.
propose a comprehensive reference images database to 5.2. Comparative results
compare with others methods.. For this test, we compare our results with those presented in
In this context, we propose three ways to test our [13]. This method is based on a 2D continuous wavelet
method. In a first time, we generate default in images of transform (CWT) followed by a Markov random field
different kind of pavement. This test shows the efficiency of segmentation step. Then a Hough Transform is used to

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detect segment. Results of a threshold method are also with information of expert about defect nature (many
proposed to justify that intensity cannot be used to detect images are without defect). We compare our crack detection
crack. method to expert tags. Table 3 gives defect detection rate on
Table 2 give results for the three methods (with three this database.
indicators: Recall (Rec), Precision (Pr) and degree of
discontinuity (DD)).
Figure 9 shows results of the three methods on three static
images. We can see efficiency of FFA to detect crack. The
CWT & Markov method enhance crack but segmented
images are very noisy.
Method Image 1 Image 2 Image 3
(Without crack)
Rec Pr DD Rec Pr DD Rec Pr DD

CWT&Markov 23,8 37 122 38,5 58 272 0/3256 - - Figure 10: FFA results. (a) Longitudinal crack, (b)
Threshold 34,5 75 113 39 50 311 0/6351 - - transversal crack, (c) alligator crack, (d) defect-free.

FFA 100 96 1 99,5 92 3 0/0 - -

Kind of default number FFA
Table 2: Comparative results on static images. of images
Good detection
Image without crack 1000 86,4 %
Longitudinal crack 14335 94,6 %
Transversal crack 533 76,7 %
Alligator crack 605 83 %
Total 16473 87,9 %
Table 3: Defect detection rate on real defect database.
The FFA obtains very good results with a rate of up to
88%. Worst results are obtained on images with transversal
cracks. In this case, we can supposed that the system used to
capture images (line scan camera with laser illumination)
cannot provide enough contrast for cracks because laser
beam and cracks are parallel so, crack profile cannot be
enhanced by illumination. For this reason, the FFA method
obtains the best results for longitudinal cracks (near 95%).

6. CONCLUSION AND PERSPECTIVES

Figure 9: Comparative results on static images. Row1:
original images (the last without crack), row2: CWT & Markov
method, row3: Threshold, row4: FFA
4.3. Results on real defects on pavement images
In these tests performed on real images (Figure 10) captured
dynamically [2], [5], computation time, for these high-
resolution images (2048x2048 pixels) is about 20 seconds
(Dell Precision PWS670, Xeon 3.6 GHz, 4 Go de RAM).
In Figure 10, all defects (Figures 10 a, b, c) are detected
(with details for alligator crack (c)). There is no false
positive because for images without defect (Figure 10d),
nothing is detected. Figure shows the efficiency of the
method to perform a good detection with very low signal
(crack) to noise ratio.
French operators give a great number of real images
captured dynamically on highways of French road network,
In this paper, we proposed a 2D image based method for
road pavement crack detection. The originality of the
method is to use in a single step, geometry and intensity
properties of crack pixels. To perform this, we developed an
algorithm to find the minimal path from a considered pixel
with a predefined length. In case of crack, this minimal path
follows crack pixels.
This method has been test on a large database of real
images captured by a high-resolution system installed on
AMAC© [2]. AMAC © is usually used to the diagnostic of
Highway road network in France. Comparative tests and
tests on synthetics defects have been made to show the
efficiency of the method.
ACKNOWLEGDMENTS
We want to give thanks to Vectra Company to support this
works.

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