Corrosion Detection Using Deep-Learning Model
Ayush Shetty Dr. Sudhamani M J
Dept. Of Computer Science
R.N. Shetty Institute Of Technology
Bangalore, India
Abstract—This paper aims to understand how deep-learning is
revolutionizing the way how industries detect rust and corrosion.
Deploying deep learning makes sense with the rapid industrial-
ization and the inevitable corrosion of machine parts. This paper
also compares the old computer vision technologies with deep-
learning and shows how deep-learning with AI is superior in
many ways. The code for deep-learning is usually written in
python and uses OpenCV libraries to categorize and compute
images. The paper summarizes previously published research
papers that were published from years 2016 through 2022.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The Latin word corrodere, which meaning ”to wear away
gradually,” is the source of the English word corrosion. Ac-
cording to science, corrosion is the electro-chemical reaction
between an environment and a metal or alloy. Together with
mechanical loss via erosion, abrasion, or wear, it is one
of the two primary factors in the corrosion of metal. All
metal buildings are vulnerable to corrosion. Society continues
to worry about the corrosion of iron and other engineering
metals because the deterioration it causes can have serious
repercussions, harm the environment, and cause significant
loss in finances. Studies that tried to estimate the annual cost of
corrosion have found that it is commonly around 3-4 percent of
GDP, and around 15 to 35% of this amount can be avoided and
a sizeable portion associated with the expense of inspection.
Machine learning techniques for feature learning based on
neural networks include deep learning. Animal and human
brains both contain biological neural networks. Computational
systems called neural networks (NNs) try to replicate this
process. They are able to learn by training, a process in
which they interact with data. We already know the essential
part of deep learning thanks to the discussion of neural
networks.Large neural networks, or architectures with many
layers, can be characterised as deep learning when they have
been trained on enormous quantities of data. Unlike other
AI-ML algorithms, deep neural networks or deep-learning
algorithms perform better with more data.
II. C ONTENT
The proposed techniques in [1] can be broadly classified
into 2 methods namely, Classic Computer Vision Technique
and The Deep Learning Model. The CV Technique has been
used for over 2 decades and has used OPENCV libraries to
develop solutions. The library uses C++ and Python interfaces.
The classifier used in this technique is fairly basic. Since
corroded parts have no particular shape or size Petricca [1]
Dept. Of Computer Science
R.N. Shetty Institute Of Technology
Bangalore, India
proposed to focus more on using the colors to identify rust
or corrosion. The color space of the image was changed to
a HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value)from the regular RGB (Red,
Green, Blue). After this the red component of the HSV image
was extracted. Since all red colors do not directly indicate
rust and since machines or bridges could be painted red, the
red component had to be narrowed down into intervals that
were not resulting in multiple false positives. After large-
scale testing an appropriate interval was found. The image
was then converted into b/w and the pixels that were white
were counted. Images with less than 0.3% of white pixels
were classified as non-rust while the rest were classified as
rust.
Petricca’s [1] second method was based on AI, namely Deep
Learning. Though deep learning isn’t a new approach, it really
took off when it won the image net competition in 2012
defeating many other classic algorithms. The deep learning
framework is specifically suited for corrosion detection as it
offers good speed and great flexibility in image processing.
The first step was to create a database of images that would
be used to train the network. 1300 images were collected
with 20% of them being used for the validation set, while
the others were used for the training set. The training process
usually takes 2 days. Since the data base was relatively small,
it was decided that the model would be fine-tuned. Using fresh
data as input, the already trained network was fine-tuned. This
method has significant benefits because it makes it possible
to reuse formerly trained networks, which saved a ton of
time. Also, since the networks have been pre-trained they has
knowledge of how parameters work and the complexity could
be reduced. The code for this algorithm has been showed in
Fig 1.
The results of these two techniques clearly a showed a
superior technique i.e. The Deep Learning Model with a total
accuracy of 88%. The classic computer vision technique on
the other hand showed an accuracy of only 69% with a lot of
false positives as it detected red as rust in non-rusted images.
Such issues weren’t faced in the deep learning model as
the networks are trained extensively and thus provided more
consistent results.

Fig. 1. The Code For Layer 8 Definition
Nash et al [2] has proposed multiple uses of deep learning
which all indirectly require detection of some form of corro-
sion.These uses include but are not limited to :
1.Indirect Detection of Degradation
2.Cracks in Welds
3.Stainless Steel Coupons
4.Remaining cycles in lithium-ion batteries
The goal of indirect degradation detection is to find change
signals that occur from material deterioration. Often employed
for vibration analysis, these procedures assess the reaction to
a source of energy that is either applied by inspectors, or from
operational conditions. Deep Learning is preferred to scour the
vast amounts of data produced by these indirect approaches
for symptoms of deterioration.
In a method published by Hou et al, DNNs were trained
to recognized faults in welding via radiography scans, with
the process achieving a maximum classification accuracy of
91.84%. It eliminates the need of a vast data set by pre-training
Stacked Sparse Autoencoders on unlabeled data before fine-
tuning on labeled data. Researchers handling challenging
datasets should take into account this strategy and others like
it. The position of the faults is provided via a sliding window;
however, the computational complexity could be reduced and
pixel level labeling provided by a convolutional architecture.
There was a (little) bottleneck created by the largescale data
pre-processing that trains on a small data set of less than a
100 scans before being applied to new scans.
In 1993 it was demonstrated that the beginning of pitting
and crevice rusting in metal could be predicted from elec-
trochemical data using a straightforward ANN. This network
was trained for 30,000 repetitions on a dataset of 50 files ,
and it was able to recognise the start of localized rusting with
90% accuracy by the end of training. This method has the
ability to find sneaky types of corrosion that are difficult to see
without potential monitoring.The beginning of the corrosion
event was randomly allocated as the first of atleast 3 data
points above the average baseline plus 2 standard divergences
calculated from benchmark noise, even though initially the
method of allocating a rusting initiation event to the data is
simple enough that an algorithm would be the superior option
over a neural network. The authors assert that the NN could
differentiate between pitting and crevice rusting and can detect
rusting earlier than basic current limit monitoring. A sensing
device working on this technology might be able to determine
the start of rusting by keeping an eye on prospective changes
in a coupon brought on by events in processing industries.
To increase the predictive power, the work in [2] could be
explored using DNN.
A deep LSTM network with two concealed layers has
been used to predict the remaining cycles of lithium ion
batteries. Users can exchange batteries before there is
a lack of charge availability because to this network’s
ability to deliver early failure warning. The network was
only trained using one battery lifetime at a temperature of
25 °C, thus it is possible that this prediction model isnt
valid for real-life applications. Further training data on
battery lifetimes under operational circumstances must be
acquired and used in order to create a more generalised model.
Sheik et al [3] proposed a technique wherein a mild steel
sample was prepared, which was followed by the accelerated
corrosion testing of the given specimen as shown in Fig 2.
The AE data gathering system was used to gather the A.E., or
Acoustic Emissions, that were generated during the accelerated
corrosion testing of the provided sample. Using acoustic sens-
ing devices, equipment, and algorithms, the Acoustic Signals
from the corrosion testing were collected. To extract unique
sample attributes, the acquired Signals were processed. For
instance, the frequency range of the pitting corrosion process
is 20–22.
The proposed technique in [3] extracts the distinct features
from the Acoustic Emissions and is passed on to a classifier
that predicts the severity of corrosion in the given sample.AE
mean, AE energy and AE-RMS are few of the statistical
features along with kurtosis and skewness that are computed.
Using these features the machine predicts the severity of
corrosion in said sample. For corrosion prediction 5 classes
have been presented,Grade 4 through 1 and no corrosion.
No corrosion grade is associated with the Acoustic signal at
beginning of the experiment as there is no mass loss. 4.65%
mass loss indicates Grade 1 and Grade 2 is indicated by 7.70%
mass loss.
Multiple architectures have been used in the experiment,
RBF-NN showing 100% accuracy, BP-NN, showing 97.2%
accuracy and the Naives Bayes Classifier showing an average
of 90.4% accuracy. It is evident from these numbers that the
RBF-NN is the superior classifier as it outperformed the other
two in terms of overall accuracy.

Fig. 2. Overview of proposed technique
Achilleas et al [4] proposed three methods to detect corro-
sion in his paper. The proposed techniques are the traditional
computer vision method and the two other methods employ
deep learning technology. Computer vision uses color tracking
to detect rust. This exact method has been utilized in [1]. The
initial input is a RGB (red, green and blue) image. The initial
step is to change the color space of the image to HSV from
RGB.For colour recognition, the HSV model is recommended
because of how resilient it is to variations in an image’s
exterior lighting. There are many other models but HSV is
used more as converting from RGB to HSV is more easily
implemented. The next step in the process is to define and
arrange for the color. The color range of red is used as default
as the general color of rust is reddish in color. Pixels in the
image containing the values of the color range are extracted
and are categorized as rust/corrosion. The extraction yields
a binary image mask with the extracted pixels marked as the
white colour range and the remaining pixels as black. The data
necessary to identify areas with corrosion or rust is present in
the mask that was made as shown in Fig 3. Using Satochi
Suzuki and Keiichi Abe’s equations and algorithms, contours
are found in the mask. The contoured area is determined using
the green equation. The percentage of corrosion in the image
is calculated using this region, and the findings are sent in
a.txt file.
Fig. 3. Data Flow Diagram Of Color Tracking Method
The second method proposed in [4] uses deep convolutional
neural networks. The goal of this method is to find what parts
of a metal surface are corroded or not. This method employs
algorithms such as CNNs that focus more on the texture of
the surface. The CNN algorithms work on the assumption
that corroded surfaces are rough and non rusted surfaces are
smooth. The CNN algorithm is trained using a lab dataset. The
dataset has two classes labeled as Rust and NoRust. Due of the
limited quantity of photos and to cut down on training time,
deep learning was used. Several pretrained models, including
VGGnet and RESnet, were evaluated before it was chosen to
utilise RESnet. When the model’s final output is 1, it indicates
that the picture was assigned to the Rust class. If the model’s
ultimate output is zero, the image is NoRust class. A sliding
technique was utilised to allow the model to be applied to
metals with both rusted and non-rusted surfaces. The method
in [4] combined the model with a sliding algorithm. The
algorithm breaks down the input image into many pieces.
Every piece is categorized and fed to the deep learning model.
If that particular piece is found to be rusted, it is marked as
Rust class. Finally the picture is returned with all the corroded
regions marked.
The third and final method used by Achilleas in [4] is
deep-learning using object detection approach. This method
uses the Single Shot MultiBox Detector to detect corrosion
and rust in real world environments. In the previous method
used in [4] where deep convolutional networks were used, the
problem of misidentifying rust based on color was solved by
focusing textures of the image. However this won’t work for
all cases as the algorithm may misinterpret faults in the metal
as corrosion as it has only learnt what is corrosion and what
is not. This happens due to the class containing the images
of metals that have been corroded but do not look like they
have been corroded when in image format. The benefit of the
third method is that it considers all background regions to
be corroded and does not train for the circumstance where
there is no rust. The TensorFlow ObjectDetection API and
Python are used to create this model. The SSD MobileNet
is used to initialise this model, and transfer learning and
resume learning are used to teach it the corrosion object or
class. The COCO 2017 dataset is used for pretraining the
detection model. On the areas with corrosion, it outputs boxes.
Nash proposed to use Bayesian Neural Networks and deep
learning to make a pixel level detector of corrosion in [5].
The High-Resolution Network is adjusted for semantic seg-
mentation, which has obtained cutting-edge results on the
open datasets of MS COCO40, Cityscapes and PASCAL
serves as the foundational deep learning model in the current
work. Four parallel branches of progressively lower resolutions
make up HRNetV2, which is enlarged to full resolution and
interconnected to create labels. The Bayesian variations are
obtained by modifying HRNetV2 in three distinct ways:
1. Variational inference: A variational convolution layer
with distinct parameters was placed at the node’s end to sample
the convolution kernel weights from the normal distribution on
each forward pass.
2. Monte Carlo dropout: By using in-line drop - outs at
each branch’s end, a Bernoulli distribution is created across the
branches at both the beginning and the end of the simulation.
3.Ensemble: By continually training HRNetV2, an collec-
tion of models adapted to multiple local minima was created.
During training, the data is evaluated through each model, and
the mean and standard deviation of the outcomes are used to
determine uncertainty. III. R EFERENCES
The work in [5] has application because the training set [1]Luca Petricca, Tomas Moss, Gonzalo Figueroa and Stian
used here includes 225 corrosion photos that were collected Broen-Corrosion Detection Using A.I.: A Comparison of
from an industrial site. The images (photos) in the dataset Standard Computer Vision Techniques and Deep Learning
range in resolution from 50,496 to 36,329,272 pixels and were Model;2016.
taken with a DSLR user camera in the visible light spectrum. [2]Will Nash, Tom Drummond and Nick Birbilis-A Review
The image dimensions are plotted and a stacked bargraph of of Deep Learning in the Study of Materials Degradation;2018.
the dataset’s RGB spectra is recorded. Which indicates the [3]Muhammad Fahad Sheikh, Khurram Kamal, Faheem
characteristics of the given dataset. Every image had per-pixel Rafique, Salman Sabir, Hassan Zaheer-Corrosion Detection
labels for ”corrosion” and ”background” and was accompanied and Severity Level Prediction using Acoustic Emission and
by a ground truth image that had been accurately labeled. Machine Learning Based Approach;2021.
Cross validation was utilized for training with 10 times due [4]Achilleas Matthaiou-Corrosion Detection with Computer
to the tiny dataset size. Vision and Deep Learning;2021.
[5]Will Nash, Liang Zheng and Nick Birbilis-Deep Learning
At the beginning of each training cycle, the model was Corrosion Detection with Confidence;2022.
initialized using weights from HRNetV2 that had been
previously trained on the MS-COCO Stuff dataset41. The
gaussian parameters of the variational convolutional layers
and the aleatoric branch, which were absent from the
pretrained HRNetV2 model, were initialized randomly from
the regular distribution. Transfer learning is the process of
applying model weights that have already been trained to
detect important features to a new task. This considerably
shortens the training period. The data set MS COCO Stuff
was selected as rust is also considered to be something
that doesn’t have a fixed shape. Training hyper-parameters
were selected to attain high accuracy on the database within
spans of 200 based on earlier trial and error. The rate of
training was adjusted to 10−5 and the RMSProp algorithm
was used to train the algorithm in accordance with Gal
and Ghahramani, who show that this design effectively
minimises the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence between
the approximation distribution and the complete posterior42.
The loss function was changed to the Bayesian binary-cross-
entropy for an additional 40 periods for the Monte-Carlo
dropout and ensemble models and an additional 70 periods
for the variational model after the models received training
using the standard binary-cross-entropy loss for 80 periods
throughout each fold. Every tenth period, the model was
tested against the fold test set, and a checkpoint was created
that could be loaded for further evaluation.