Urban road surface crack detection based on U-net and ResNeXt network

With the continuous increase in urban road usage, various cracks often appear on the road surface, which may pose a threat to traffic safety. Presently, road inspection is still primarily limited to manual methods, which suffer from low efficiency, limited accuracy, and subjective judgment. To enhance the efficiency of road crack detection, the paper designs an innovative detection technology that fuses U-net and ResNeXt networks. The results showed that the proposed method achieved superior detection performance on horizontal and vertical cracks. While its recognition and classification capabilities for other types of cracks and block cracks need improvement, it still demonstrated significant overall classification performance. Compared with numerous detection methods, the performance of the proposed method was notably superior. The peak memory efficiency of the video memory of this method is controlled within 2.1GB. This indicates that in practical applications, the proposed method can provide accurate information on road surface cracks, making it easier for workers to take corresponding remedial measures. In summary, the proposed urban road surface crack detection method can be integrated into intelligent transportation systems, providing technical support for real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance of road conditions.

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Publication Details

Journal
PLoS ONE
Published
2026-04-21
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0347145
Primary Topic
Infrastructure Maintenance and Monitoring
Type
article
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Urban road surface crack detection based on U-net and ResNeXt network

Jun Qiao, Zidong Zhou, Minghui Gong, Yunwei Meng et al.
PLoS ONE
Infrastructure Maintenance and Monitoring
article

Urban road surface crack detection based on U-net and ResNeXt network

Jun Qiao, Zidong Zhou, Minghui Gong, Yunwei Meng, Huabing Wang
article en

Abstract

With the continuous increase in urban road usage, various cracks often appear on the road surface, which may pose a threat to traffic safety. Presently, road inspection is still primarily limited to manual methods, which suffer from low efficiency, limited accuracy, and subjective judgment. To enhance the efficiency of road crack detection, the paper designs an innovative detection technology that fuses U-net and ResNeXt networks. The results showed that the proposed method achieved superior detection performance on horizontal and vertical cracks. While its recognition and classification capabilities for other types of cracks and block cracks need improvement, it still demonstrated significant overall classification performance. Compared with numerous detection methods, the performance of the proposed method was notably superior. The peak memory efficiency of the video memory of this method is controlled within 2.1GB. This indicates that in practical applications, the proposed method can provide accurate information on road surface cracks, making it easier for workers to take corresponding remedial measures. In summary, the proposed urban road surface crack detection method can be integrated into intelligent transportation systems, providing technical support for real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance of road conditions.

PLoS ONEVol. 21(4)
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (CN), China Railway Shanghai Design Institute Group (China) (CN), Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Rail Transit Design & Research Institute (CN), China Railway Group (China) (CN), China Railway Design Corporation (China) (CN), Institute of New Materials (CN), Changsha University of Science and Technology (CN), Chongqing Jiaotong University (CN)
Sustainable cities and communities
Openalex Percentile: Top 19%
Infrastructure Maintenance and Monitoring
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