ELS-YOLO: Efficient Lightweight YOLO for Steel Surface Defect Detection

Detecting surface defects in steel products is essential for maintaining manufacturing quality. However, existing methods struggle with significant challenges, including substantial defect size variations, diverse defect types, and complex backgrounds, leading to suboptimal detection accuracy. This work introduces ELS-YOLO, an advanced YOLOv11n-based algorithm designed to tackle these limitations. A C3k2_THK module is first introduced that combines a partial convolution, heterogeneous kernel selection protocoland the SCSA attention mechanism to improve feature extraction while reducing computational overhead. Additionally, the Staged-Slim-Neck module is developed that employs dual and dilated convolutions at different stages while integrating GMLCA attention to enhance feature representation and reduce computational complexity. Furthermore, an MSDetect detection head is designed to boost multi-scale detection performance. Experimental validation shows that ELS-YOLO outperforms YOLOv11n in detection accuracy while achieving 8.5% and 11.1% reductions in the number of parameters and computational cost, respectively, demonstrating strong potential for real-world industrial applications.