Advancing Pavement Distress Detection in Developing Countries: A Novel Deep Learning Approach with Locally Collected Data sets

Pavement distress detection is of great significance to pavement maintenance and management. Currently, image-processing methods have been developed, especially with the widespread use of the convolutional neural networks (CNN). However, most CNN applications are still limited to the general object detection model (GODM), which is difficult to adapt to the detection of complex road scenes. In this study, a dedicated object detection model, RoadID, was designed based on the CNN to detect multiple pavement distresses in a complex environment. In terms of training data, a natural pavement distress data set was established, in which eight pavement distress types—distress, crack, patch-crack, net-crack, patch-net, pothole, patch-pothole, manhole, and hinged-joint—were annotated. More than 60,000 images and 140,000 distresses are described in the data set. Various data augmentation methods, such as motion blur, frequency noise, and random rotation, were used to expand the original data set about 2.5 times. Resnet152 was chosen as the basic feature extraction network and pretrained with manhole images, which promoted the expression ability of the model and the convergence efficiency of training. To improve the imbalance of positive and negative samples, focal loss and mean squared error were combined as loss functions for training. In the prediction stage, modular design was adapted for each distress category for convenience of the expansion of other detection categories, enhancing the scalability of RoadID. Road markings and shadows were added to the data training as disturbances to improve the generalization performance of the model in complex scenes. The mean accuracy of the model reached 83.5%. Compared with the GODM, RoadID has advantages in both recognition accuracy and prediction speed. The proposed method can be used for rapid investigation of pavement conditions to support maintenance and repair.

With India having the second-largest road network globally (5,603,293 km), following the United States, the country is positioned to lead in transforming smart roads. The rapid advancement of Internet of Things (IoT) technology has garnered significant attention for its applications in road infrastructure monitoring. This study systematically examines the challenges in adopting smart road sensing technology for infrastructure monitoring and maintenance in Bilaspur city of Chhattisgarh. The study used a mixed-methods approach, combining both primary data collection through surveys and interviews and secondary data collection through a deep literature survey. Currently, in Bilaspur city, the monitoring and maintenance of road infrastructure is done through traditional methods, which include: visual distress survey, manual pothole patching, crack sealing, cleaning the drainage system, and periodic resurfacing. The traditional system of monitoring and maintenance of road infrastructure in Bilaspur city is associated with limitations. The limitations of traditional methods for monitoring and maintenance of road infrastructure in Bilaspur city can be significantly mitigated through the integration of smart road sensing technologies, which shift maintenance paradigms from reactive to proactive strategies by enabling early detection and quantification of pavement distress. While interviewing the related authorities and through a previous literature survey, the author found that the adoption of smart road sensing technologies for monitoring and maintenance of road infrastructure in Bilaspur city faces a number of challenges. The results reveal that the key challenges faced in Bilaspur city for adopting smart road sensing technology include: a). Technical challenges (sensor accuracy and reliability, sensor failure under prolonged use, data fusion and interpretation, real-time processing and latency, power consumption and durability, and environmental and weather challenges), b). Economic challenges (high initial costs, return on investment concerns, ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs, infrastructure damage during installation), and c). Regulatory and standardisation challenges (lack of standardisation, privacy and security concerns, and regulatory approval and compliance). There is a need to address these challenges before the implementation of the smart road sensing system in Bilaspur city of Chhattisgarh. Future studies should focus on the development of more durable and energy-efficient sensor technologies, integration of 5G and edge computing for improved real-time processing.

Road networks are critical to modern transportation, but increasing traffic and environmental stresses frequently cause pavement distresses such as cracks and potholes, demanding efficient detection methods. Traditional manual inspection is inefficient and subjective, while deep learning approaches like the YOLO series offer real-time detection advantages. However, YOLOv11 faces challenges in low-contrast feature extraction, small-target representation, and class imbalance under complex road conditions. This paper presents an enhanced YOLOv11 framework to address these issues. The MixStructure module employs multi-scale parallel large convolution kernels and enhanced parallel attention to capture fine-grained features, while the Kernel Selection Fusion Attention dynamically adapts receptive fields for slender cracks and small potholes. The Adaptive Learning Threshold Focal loss function mitigates class imbalance via dynamic sample weighting. Experiments on the RDD2022 dataset show the improved model achieves mAP50 of 89.34% (1.79% gain over YOLOv11) and mAP50-95 of 60.18% (4.08% gain). Maintaining real-time efficiency and stable convergence, the model offers robust performance in complex scenarios, providing an effective solution for automated pavement distress detection to enhance infrastructure maintenance.

As power grid structure becomes increasingly complex, the impact of the operation status of key substation equipment on the safe and stable operation of the power grid is gradually increasing. Aiming at the problems of dense targets and occlusion recognition difficulties in the complex background of substations, an improved you-only-look-once (YOLO) v4 insulator defect detection algorithm is proposed. A large number of insulator and defect datasets were collected from the Internet. We use MobileNet-v2 to replace the backbone network of YOLOv4, and in view of the problem that the accuracy of YOLOv4 target detection model is not high for small targets or dense targets, convolutional block attention module (CBAM) attention mechanism is added to the backbone network to enhance the feature extraction ability, and ultra-lightweight subspace attention module (ULSAM) is added to the detection head to learn the cross-channel information. Experiments based on InDataset show that the insulator defect detection algorithm based on deep learning proposed achieves a high detection accuracy and detection speed; the mean average precision of the improved YOLOv4 model is 87.48%, and the recall rate of insulator defects reaches 79.84%, which meets the requirements of robustness and accuracy of insulator defect detection in real scenarios.

Weeds are one of the primary factors that reduce crop productivity by competing for nutrients and water, causing the plant to lose weight and resulting in reduced grain yield. Traditional agricultural practices often rely on uniform herbicide application, which can contaminate soil and raise costs. On agricultural land, selective weed treatment are an efficient and cost-effective way to control weeds that require a deep learning-based crop and weed segmentation system. Many existing crop and weed segmentation research works focus on achieving precise crop and weed segmentation results, rather than building lightweight models to deploy on edge devices. To attain this, we develop an effective and efficient convolutional neural network, namely the Concatenated Attention U-Net with Convolutional Block Attention Module (CAUC). By integrating Linear Concatenated Blocks (LCB), Attention Gate (AG) connections, and Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM), the proposed model efficiently utilizes feature maps among its architectural components to achieve superior performance. Depth-wise convolution layers and 1 × 1 convolution layers in LCBs reduce computational complexity. To enable the proposed model to identify the weed portions in multiple crop fields, we integrated three datasets in this research work, namely the Crop/Weed Field Image Dataset (CWFID), Sugar Beet, and Sunflower datasets. Experimental results on carrot, sugar beet, and sunflower crop datasets demonstrate high Accuracy (99.09%), MIoU (81.02%), and F1-score (99.06%), with a modest model size (5.6 MB) and computational parameters (0.377 million). We developed a lightweight computer vision application (13.7 MB) to demonstrate the model’s efficacy on low-computational devices.

Acquiring the growth information of tobacco plants quickly and accurately is an important prerequisite for their daily management. In view of the problem that the convolutional neural network is easily affected by background information, this study introduces the Convolutional Block Attention Module into the U <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2-</sup> Net. This method is mainly composed of an encoder and a decoder. Before the feature map is decoded, it will go through the Convolutional Block Attention Module to filter more important features and inhibit the invalid features. In the decoder, in order to fuse the features of objects in different scales, the feature maps in the decoder are up-sampled and then concatenated. This information aggregation solves the problem of difficult object detection at different scales to some extent. The results of this method are compared with four current mainstream deep learning models(U <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> -Net, DeeplabV3+, PSP-Net, U-Net). The result shows: 1) The U <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> -Net network based on the Convolutional Block Attention Module has the highest extraction accuracy for the UAV visible light remote senseing of tobacco(accuracy was 98.53%, recall was 96.00%,F1-Score was 96.38%, kappa coefficient was 0.95, IOU was 93.02%); 2)In the extraction of the three test areas, the extraction value of this method is highly consistent with the label area value(the area ratios of a total of 13 plants in the three regions were kept between 90% and 100%),the effect is much higher than that of DeeplabV3+ and PSP-Net, and slightly higher than the extraction effect of U <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> -Net and U-Net. 3)In the segmentation of three typical canopy closure regions of A, B, and C, most of the accuracy factors in different regions can reach 94% and above. It can be seen that the method in this study has certain advantages in feature extraction and has certain value in practical application.

Traditional crop pest detection methods face the challenge of numerous parameters and computations, making it difficult to deploy on embedded devices with limited resources. Consequently, a lightweight network is an effective solution to this issue. Based on you only look once (YOLO)v5, this paper aims to design and validate a lightweight and effective pest detector called pest-YOLO. First, a random background augmentation method is proposed to reduce the prediction error rate. Furthermore, a MobileNetV3-light backbone replaces the YOLOv5n backbone to reduce parameters and computations. Finally, the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) is integrated into the new network to compensate for the reduction in accuracy. Compared to the YOLOv5n model, the pest-YOLO model’s Parameters and Giga Floating Point Operations (GFLOPs) decrease by about 33% and 52.5% significantly, and the Frames per Second (FPS) increase by approximately 11.1%. In contrast, the Mean Average Precision (mAP50) slightly declines by 2.4%, from 92.7% to 90.3%.

With the continuous development of deep learning technologies, fault prediction techniques based on various neural networks have been evolving. The deep learning modules based on U-Net residual networks have shown significant advantages in both learning efficiency and effectiveness. In this paper, we propose a deep learning model that integrates a 3D U-Net residual architecture, Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM), and Multi-scale Enhanced Global Attention (MEGA) module for automatic seismic fault detection and segmentation. This model can effectively handle complex 3D seismic data, fully exploiting both spatial and channel information, significantly improving the prediction accuracy for small faults, while only slightly increasing the computational cost.Firstly, the model uses the 3D U-Net as the backbone framework, where the residual blocks (BasicRes) extract features through multiple convolution layers. The CBAM module is incorporated to apply attention weighting, enhancing the model's ability to focus on critical information. The CBAM module combines channel attention and spatial attention, effectively adjusting the importance of feature maps from different dimensions, enabling the model to identify potential fault features in complex seismic data.Secondly, the MEGA module is introduced into the model, which further improves the model's feature representation ability by fusing multi-scale features and applying a global attention mechanism. By weighting global information, the MEGA module helps the model better capture key seismic fault features during feature fusion. This design allows the model to focus not only on local details but also to fully utilize the global contextual information in 3D data, thereby enhancing the accuracy of fault detection.After validation, the model achieved promising results in seismic fault detection tasks, automatically identifying and segmenting fault structures in seismic data. The accuracy was improved from 80% with the original 3D U-Net residual network to 85%-87%. This provides strong support for applications such as seismic exploration and subsurface imaging.Keywords: Seismic Fault Detection, 3D U-Net, Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM), Multi-scale Enhanced Global Attention (MEGA), Deep Learning

In this paper, we compared five crack detection algorithms using terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) point clouds. The methods are developed based on common point cloud processing knowledge in along- and across-track profiles, surface fitting or local pointwise features, with or without machine learning. The crack area and volume were calculated from the crack points detected by the algorithms. The completeness, correctness, and F1 score of each algorithm were computed against manually collected references. Ten 1-m-by-3.5-m plots containing 75 distresses of six distress types (depression, disintegration, pothole, longitudinal, transverse, and alligator cracks) were selected to explain variability of distresses from a 3-km-long-road. For crack detection at plot level, the best algorithm achieved a completeness of up to 0.844, a correctness of up to 0.853, and an F1 score of up to 0.849. The best algorithm’s overall (ten plots combined) completeness, correctness, and F1 score were 0.642, 0.735, and 0.685 respectively. For the crack area estimation, the overall mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE) of the two best algorithms were 19.8% and 20.3%. In the crack volume estimation, the two best algorithms resulted in 19.3% and 14.5% MAPE. When the plots were grouped based on crack detection complexity, in the ‘easy’ category, the best algorithm reached a crack area estimation MAPE of 8.9%, while for crack volume estimation, the MAPE obtained from the best algorithm was 0.7%.

In agricultural research, effective and efficient disease detection in crops is crucial for enhancing yield and sustainability. This study presents a novel approach to improving YOLOv8, a state-of-the-art object detection model, by integrating the Ghost model with three advanced attention mechanisms: Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM), Triplet Attention, and Efficiency Multi-Scale Attention (EMA). The Ghost model optimizes feature extraction by reducing computational complexity, while the attention modules enable the model to focus on relevant regions, improving detection performance. The resulting Ghost-Attention-YOLOv8 model was evaluated on the Rice Leaf Disease dataset to assess its efficacy in identifying and classifying various diseases. The experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in accuracy, precision, and recall compared to the baseline YOLOv8 model. The proposed Ghost YOLOv8s with Efficiency Multi-Scale Attention model achieves a parameter count of 5.5 M, a reduction of 4.3 million compared to the original YOLOv8s model, while the accuracy is improved: the mAP@50 metric reaches 95.4%, a 2.3% increase; and mAP@50–95 improves to 62.4%, an increase of 3.7% over the original YOLOv8s. This research offers a practical solution to the challenges of computational efficiency and accuracy in agricultural monitoring, contributing to the development of robust AI tools for disease detection in crops.

MRI image classification of brain tumors is critical for accurate and early diagnosis. New developments in deep learning have revealed that inserting attention mechanisms into convolutional neural networks can greatly improve classification performance. This work assesses the effectiveness of Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) and Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) integrated with the ResNet50 model for brain tumor classification. The SE module recalibrates channel-wise feature responses, while CBAM enhances feature representation by combining channel and spatial attention. The SE and CBAM are combined with ResNet50, greatly increasing classification accuracy, precision, and recall when compared to the basic model, according to experimental results on MRI datasets. The suggested model employs attention mechanisms to focus valuable information selectively and suppress irrelevant information. The experiments on publicly available brain tumor datasets display great improvements over basic CNN models, with precision, recall, accuracy, as well as F1 score at 0.9914, 0.9903, 0.9945, and 0.9908, respectively. From these results, the importance of attention mechanisms in deep learning models for medical imaging is highlighted, which suggests that SE and CBAM modules can be available as more dependable and effective instruments for brain tumor classification in clinical settings. Future studies should investigate transformer-based and hybrid attention techniques to enhance automated brain tumor categorization.

Motivated by the increasing popularity and success of attention mechanisms, we observe that popular convolutional attention models like Squeeze-and-Excite (SE) and Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) rely on expensive multi-layer perceptron (MLP) layers. These MLP layers significantly increase computational complexity, making such models less applicable to 3D image contexts, where the data dimensionality and computational costs are inherently higher. In 3D medical imaging, such as pulmonary CT scans, efficient processing is crucial due to the large volume of data. Traditional 2D attention mechanisms, when generalized to 3D, increase the computational load, creating a demand for more efficient attention mechanisms that can operate effectively within a 3D tasks. In this work, we investigate the possibility of incorporating fully convolutional attention within 3D context. Particularly, we present two 3D fully convolutional attention blocks in which we demonstrate effectiveness within the 3D context. We demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed method using the pulmonary CT scans for 3D lung nodule detection. Building on existing 3D nodule detection methods, we present AttentNet, an automated lung nodule detection framework from CT images that performs detection as an ensemble of two stages, candidate proposal stage (Region Proposal Network), in which a high number of candidates is produced, and a false positive reduction stage to reduce the number of false alarms. Throughout our work, we compare the proposed 3D convolutional attention blocks to a number of popular 2D convolutional attention mechanisms by generalizing them to 3D modules, including SE units and CBAM channel attention and spatial attention units. We also compare these to Transformer self-attention units. For the False positive reduction stage, we incorporate a joint analysis approach that considers the variable nodule morphology by aggregating spatial information from different contextual levels. We use LUNA-16 lung nodule detection dataset to demonstrate the benefits of using the proposed fully convolutional attention blocks comparing to baseline popular lung nodule detection methods where no attention is used. It is worth noting that our work does not aim at achieving state-of-the-art results in the lung nodule detection task, rather to demonstrate the benefits of incorporating fully convolutional attention within a 3D context.

Traditional maize seedling detection mainly relies on manual observation and experience, which is time-consuming and prone to errors. With the rapid development of deep learning and object-detection technology, we propose a lightweight model LW-YOLOv7 to address the above issues. The new model can be deployed on mobile devices with limited memory and real-time detection of maize seedlings in the field. LW-YOLOv7 is based on YOLOv7 but incorporates GhostNet as the backbone network to reduce parameters. The Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) enhances the network’s attention to the target region. In the head of the model, the Path Aggregation Network (PANet) is replaced with a Bi-Directional Feature Pyramid Network (BiFPN) to improve semantic and location information. The SIoU loss function is used during training to enhance bounding box regression speed and detection accuracy. Experimental results reveal that LW-YOLOv7 outperforms YOLOv7 in terms of accuracy and parameter reduction. Compared to other object-detection models like Faster RCNN, YOLOv3, YOLOv4, and YOLOv5l, LW-YOLOv7 demonstrates increased accuracy, reduced parameters, and improved detection speed. The results indicate that LW-YOLOv7 is suitable for real-time object detection of maize seedlings in field environments and provides a practical solution for efficiently counting the number of seedling maize plants.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) based ultrasound image processing is quite important for diagnosis of renal tumors. Traditional networks, however, struggle with accurate lesion segmentation and differentiation between benign and malignant cases in complex ultrasound images. This paper introduces an advanced multitask network model to overcome these limitations. Our model combines a deep separable Convolutional ResNet with a NestedUNet, enriched with a Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) and residual connections, enhancing its precision in lesion segmentation and classification in intricate images. Compared with the existing methods, the model proposed in this study has the following innovative contributions: (1) combining depthwise separable convolution and NestedUNet, the computational efficiency and feature extraction ability of the model are significantly improved; (2) The Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) is introduced to enhance the attention to key features, to effectively distinguish lesions in complex backgrounds; (3) The gradient flow is improved by the residual connection, which ensures the stable training of the deep network. Experimental results show that the IoU of the model on the kidney tumor dataset reaches 94.23%, which is significantly better than that of STUNet (92.31%). These results show that the model proposed in this study has significant advantages in processing complex ultrasound images, providing a more accurate basis for clinical diagnosis, and has a high application potential.

MC-ShuffleNetV2: A lightweight model for maize disease recognition