Image segmentation method of rail head defects and area measurement of selected segments

¹ State University of Infrastructure and Technologies, Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, 04071 Kyiv, Kyrylivska Str. 9, Ukraine
² State University of Trade and Economics, Department of Foreign Philology and Translation, 02156 Kyiv, Kyoto Str. 19, Ukraine

^* Corresponding author: tverdomed@gsuite.duit.edu.ua

Abstract

The operation safety of railway transport, which is the most important economic and social factor, is largely determined by the technical condition of the rail track and measures to maintain the quality of its track management system. One of the system elements for ensuring the accident-free operation of the track is the technical diagnosis of rails using a method complex of non-destructive control of rails, such as acoustic (ultrasonic), magnetic, combined, etc., and monitoring of the track using methods of measuring the geometry of the rail track and its disturbances.

When the wheel interacts with the rail, especially on high-speed and load-stressed sections, defects and damage inevitably occur in the rails. A rather large share of such defects are on the rolling surface of the rail head. Formed defects develop rapidly, which seriously complicates the safety of train traffic. Therefore, accurate and quick detection of defects on the rolling surface of the rail head is very important. However, it is quite difficult to detect defects on the rolling surface of the rail by the acoustic (ultrasound) method due to the violation of tight contact between the rolling surface of the rail head and the piezoelectric transducer. In this case, it is quite convenient to detect surface defects of the rail head using video control.

The article provides a comparative analysis of segmentation methods. There has been presented the method of image segmentation of main rail defects based on general contour preparation and parallel-hierarchical (PH) transformation using their classification. The parallel-hierarchical transformation method allows to increase the segmentation accuracy of individual areas in the original image compared to similar ones. The algorithm of pyramidal generalized-contour preparation and the criterion system allows, by calculating the threshold for each level of the gray scale, to present the study of the image with the corresponding contour preparations at the segmentation level. Modeling of recursive generalized-contour preparation and PH transformation method for image segmentation problem of rail head defects shows that, compared to the segmentation method based on the increase of areas, the accuracy of image segmentation is better. A modified method of calculating the image contour area based on the coding of lines forming the boundaries of the black and white areas of the two-gradation image has been given.