Cited by 151Industrial Vision Systems and Defect DetectionNon-Destructive Testing TechniquesInfrastructure Maintenance and Monitoring

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 137 of the 140 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; 4 of the 221 sources its claims cite were checked for support.

Automated Visual Defect Classification for Flat Steel Surface: A Survey

Luo, Qiwu, Fang, Xiaoxin, Su, Jiaojiao, Zhou, Jian, Zhou, Bingxing, Yang, Chunhua, Liu, Li, Gui, Weihua, Tian, Lu·2020·IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement

Abstract

For a typical surface automated visual inspection (AVI) instrument of planar materials, defect classification is an indispensable part after defect detection, which acts as a crucial precondition for achieving the online quality inspection of end products. In the industrial environment of manufacturing flat steels, this task is awfully difficult due to diverse defect appearances, ambiguous intraclass, and interclass distances. This article attempts to present a focused but systematic review of the traditional and emerging automated computer-vision-based defect classification methods by investigating approximately 140 studies on three specific flat steel products of con-casting slabs, hot-rolled steel strips, and cold-rolled steel strips. According to the natural image processing procedure of defect recognition, the diverse approaches are grouped into five successive parts: image acquisition, image preprocessing, feature extraction, feature selection, and defect classifier. Recent literature has been reviewed from an industrial goal-oriented perspective to provide some guidelines for future studies and recommend suitable methods for boosting the surface quality inspection level of AVI instruments.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This survey reviews approximately 140 studies on automated visual defect classification for flat steel surfaces, covering continuous casting slabs, hot-rolled steel strips, and cold-rolled steel strips. It synthesizes traditional and deep-learning methods across five processing stages and identifies future directions such as multimode fusion, small-sample learning, and better time-cost evaluation.

Key findings

  • The survey investigates approximately 140 studies and states that literature over the last ten years accounts for approximately 75% of the reviewed advancements.
  • Methods are grouped into five successive components: image acquisition, image preprocessing, feature extraction, feature selection, and defect classifier.
  • In feature selection, PCA is reported as the most frequently used dimension-reduction method, and GA is preferred for feature optimization; deep-learning methods such as CNN, CAE, and GAN are widely applied but often depend on labeled data.
  • Table IV reports typical classification accuracies, including 99.50% for a deep CNN with majority voting on hot-rolled strips, 99.11% for generalized completed LBP + NNC on hot-rolled strips (266.74 ms per image), 97.5% for a SqueezeNet-based model (8.0 ms per image), and 98.12% for multiple support vector hypersphere with feature and sample weights (1.17 ms per image).

Methods

  • Design: a focused systematic review of traditional and emerging computer-vision-based defect classification methods for flat steel, investigating approximately 140 studies on continuous casting slabs, hot-rolled steel strips, and cold-rolled steel strips.
  • Organization: the review follows the natural image-processing procedure and groups approaches into image acquisition, image preprocessing, feature extraction, feature selection, and defect classifier.
  • Analysis: it compares strengths and weaknesses of method families and includes a statistical list of typical methods with application, difficulty, performance, and classification time where available; no new experimental dataset is introduced.

Limitations

  • Stated: most current classification methods emphasize accuracy and noise robustness while rarely involving time-cost evaluation, which matters for in-situ AVI on high-speed production lines.
  • Stated: feature selection algorithms are generally identical and somewhat unitary in steel surface defect recognition, and the feature selection process is discounted; unsupervised learning results still show some disparity from the ultimate goal.
  • Evident: as a survey, the paper reports no primary experiments, and many entries in Table IV have “T: NA,” limiting cross-study comparison of real-time suitability; its scope is also limited to three flat steel product types rather than all planar materials.

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Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1109/tim.2020.3030167

Cites

137 of 137 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

96 Not checked yet · 79 No basis given · 32 Own interpretation · 7 Sources not found · 1 Own result · accuracy not yet measured

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Show all 32 claims

  • It may state two separate claims as one. 109
  • Probably not a substantial claim. 146
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 1
183 of 183
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The natural image processing procedure of defect recognition consists of five successive parts: image acquisition, image preprocessing, feature extraction, feature selection, and defect classifier.

    “According to the natural image processing procedure of defect recognition, the diverse approaches are grouped into five successive parts: image acquisition, image preprocessing, feature extraction, feature selection and defect classifier.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The traditional spatial domain feature set is very complex, very laborious to extract, and difficult to guarantee real-time recognition of flat steel surface defects.

    “The traditional spatial domain feature set is very complex, very laborious to extract and difficult to guarantee the real-time recognition of flat steel surface defects.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    To support near-real-time operation, feature extraction needs to be competitive in feature dimensions and algorithm properties.

    “To support near-real-time operation, the feature extraction need to be competitive in feature dimensions and algorithm properties.”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    The data are a low-dimensional manifold uniformly sampled in a high-dimensional Euclidean space.

    “Supposing the data are a low-dimensional manifold uniformly sampled in a high-dimensional Euclidean space”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    Graph embedding dimensionality reduction methods assume the data set is on a low-dimensional manifold embedded in the raw high-dimensional feature space.

    “which are all based on the assumption that the data set is on a low-dimensional manifold embedded in the raw high-dimensional feature space.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Most existing steel samples are not marked because of the randomness and limitations of the production line, so only a small amount of data with safety labels can be used for learning, resulting in instability of the final classification results.

    “However, most of the existing steel samples are not marked because of the randomness and limitations of the production line, so only a small amount of data with safety labels can be used for learning, resulting in the instability of the final classification results.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    In real-world flat steel industrial production lines, collecting and manually labeling a large number of flat steel surface defect data is extremely labour intensive and time consuming, compounded by harsh manufacturing environments.

    “In real-world flat steel industrial production lines, it is extremely labour intensive and time consuming to collect a large number of flat steel surface defect data, and label them manually; this challenge is compounded by the harsh manufacturing environment (e.g., high temperature, poor lighting conditions, mechanical vibrations, and dense dust).”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The imbalance of defect samples in actual flat steel production lines is a real problem that prompts researchers to use limited samples to achieve similar results.

    “However, the imbalance of defect samples in actual flat steel production lines has prompted researchers to use limited samples to achieve similar results.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The quality of the input image and the original parameters of the classification model are the keys to determining the classification performance of the unsupervised learning model.

    “However, the quality of the input image and the original parameters of the classification model are the keys to determining the classification performance of the unsupervised learning model.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The accuracy of a single-mode algorithm for classification is always limited.

    “The accuracy of a single-mode algorithm for classification is always limited”
10 of 10

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Citations

Cites

Show all 140 references

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. song, 2014, Automatic recognition of surface defects on hot-rolled steel strip using scattering convolution network, J Comput Inf Syst, 10, 3049
  2. xu, 2008, Application of fractal dimensions based on the optimized scale to classification of surface defects on hot-rolled steel strips, Metallic Equipment, 168, 1

Cited by

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Metadata

Authors
Luo, Q., Fang, X., Su, J., Zhou, J., Zhou, B., Yang, C., Liu, L., Gui, W., & Tian, L.
Affiliations
  • Central South University (CN)
  • Hefei University of Technology (CN)
  • National University of Defense Technology (CN)
Venue
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement
Published
2020-12
Volume
69
Issue
12
Pages
9329-9349
ISSN
  • 0018-9456 (ISSN-L)
  • 1557-9662
OpenAlex
W3102571413
Cited by
148
References
140
Citations by year
2026: 21 · 2025: 34 · 2024: 28 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 13
FWCI
10.36
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • National Natural Science Foundation of China (61988101, 61973323, 51704089)
  • Hunan Provincial National Science Foundation of China (2020JJ4747)
  • Innovation and Development Project of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic of China (TC19084DY)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering › Industrial Vision Systems and Defect Detection
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Mechanical Engineering › Non-Destructive Testing Techniques
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Civil and Structural Engineering › Infrastructure Maintenance and Monitoring
Keywords
automated visual inspection, surface defect classification, flat steel, steel slabs, hot-rolled strip, cold-rolled steel strip, image preprocessing, feature extraction, feature selection, defect detection, online quality inspection, computer vision

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