Automatic Rail track inspection and assessment

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgement iii
Chapter 1: Introduction
Background and
motivation.1
Chapter 2: Current Scenario

Chapter 3: Techniques used in rail track detection

3.1: Long Range Ultrasonic Testing (LRUT)4

3.2: LED-LDR Assembly4
3.3 : Railway Machine-Vision Inspection Systems5
3.4

Train-Mounted

GPR..6
Chapter 4: DATA COLLECTION..8
4.1: Image and Video Acquisition8
4.2: Virtual Track Model for Initial Algorithm Development .9

Chapter 5: ALGORITHM DEVELOPMENT AND DATA ANLYSIS SYSTEM...........12

Chapter 6: Conclusion.19

Chapter 7: REFERENCES..21

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Automatic Rail track inspection and assessment

1.Introduction
1.1 Background and motivation
North American Railways and the United States Department of Transportation (US DOT)
Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) require periodic inspection of railway
infrastructure to ensure the safety of railway operation. This inspection is a critical, but
labor-intensive task resulting in large annual operating expenditures and it has limitations
in speed, quality, objectivity, and scope. A machine vision approach is being developed to
automate inspection of specific components in the track structure. The machine vision
system consists of a video acquisition system for recording digital images of track and
custom designed algorithms to identify defects and symptomatic conditions from these
images, providing a robust solution to facilitate more efficient and effective track
inspection. The main focus of the system is the detection of irregularities and defects in
wood-tie fasteners, rail anchors, and turnout components. An experimental on-track
image acquisition system has been developed and used to acquire video in the field of
different track classes. The machine-vision algorithms use a global-to-local component
recognition approach, in which edge and texture-based detection techniques are used to
narrow the search area where components are likely to be detected. The system will be
designed to evaluate the railway infrastructure in accordance with FRA track safety
regulations, but will be adaptable to railroad-specific track standards. Some of the track
inspections such as measuring the tracks curvature and alignment, as well as the cross
level of the two rails, have already been automated using a track geometry car; however,
other inspections, such as monitoring the spiking and anchor patterns and detecting raised
or missing spikes and anchors, are still manually and visually conducted by rail road track
inspectors. It is, thus, of great interest to railroad companies to enhance the current
manual inspection process using machine vision technology for more efficient, effective,
and objective inspections. It also helps them lower maintenance costs and increase track
capacity

2.Current Scenario
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The prompt detection of the conditions in rails that may lead to a crack or rather a break
now plays a critical role in the maintenance of rails worldwide. The understanding of
these mechanisms is constantly improving and the evolution of a range of complementary
(Non Destructive Testing)NDT techniques has resulted in a number of tools for us to
choose from. Among the inspection methods used to ensure rail integrity, the common
ones are visual inspection, ultrasonic inspection and eddy current inspection. It is a
relatively well understood technique and was thought to be the best solution to crack
detection. However, Ultrasonics can only inspect the core of materials; that is, the method
cannot check for surface and near-surface cracking where many of the faults are located.
Eddy currents are used to tide over this limitation associated with ultrasonics. They are
effectively used to check for cracks located at the surface of metals such as rails.
MPI is also used in the rail industry but there are a number of problems inherent with this
technique, some of which are mentioned below:
Surface of the rail or component must first be cleaned of
all coatings, rust and so on.
To get a sensitive reading, contrast paint must first be
applied to the rail, followed by the magnetic particle coating.
The same inspection must then be carried out in two
different directions at a very slow overall speed.
However, in the Indian scenario, we find that the visual form of inspection is widely used,
though it produces the poorest results of all the methods. It is now becoming widely
accepted that even surface cracking often cannot be seen by the naked eye.

3. Techniques For Inspecting the cracks in Rail Track

3.1 Long Range Ultrasonic Testing (LRUT)
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Long Range Ultrasonic Testing (LRUT) technique is proposed as a complimentary

inspection technique to examine the foot of rails, especially in track regions where
corrosion and associated fatigue cracking is likely, such as at level crossings. LRUT
technique is found to be suitable for examining inaccessible areas of railway tracks such
as areas where corrosion occurs and susceptible areas of fatigue cracking. In different
parts of the rail section (such as head, web and foot) properties of guided waves are used
and are examined for their capability to detect defects in each part.
A suitable array of transducers is developed that is able to generate selected guided wave
modes in rails which allow a reliable long range inspection of the rail. The characteristics
of ultrasonic guided waves in the rail complex geometrical profile have been identified.

3.2 LED-LDR Assembly

An algorithm for crack detection in rail tracks is uses [9] Light
Emitting Diode and Light Emitting Resistor (LED-LDR) assembly which
tracks the exact location of faulty track. The design proposed by the
authors includes LED which are attached to one side of the rails and
the LDR to the opposite side. When there are no cracks i.e. during
normal operation, the LED light does not fall on the LDR and hence the
LDR resistance is high. Subsequently, when the LED light falls on the
LDR, the resistance of the LDR gets reduced and the amount of
reduction will be approximately proportional to the intensity of the
incident light. Consequently the light from the LED deviates from its
path due to the presence of a crack or a break and there is a sudden
decrease in the resistance value of the LDR. This change in resistance
indicates presence of a crack or some other similar structural defect in
the rails. In order to detect the current location of the device in case of
detection of a crack, a GPS receiver whose function is to receive the
current latitude and longitude data is used. To communicate the
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received information, a GSM modem has been utilized. The function of the GSM
module being used is to send the current latitude and longitude data to the
relevant authority as an SMS. The robot is driven by four DC motors. If
this system is employed only latitudes and longitudes of the broken
track will only be received so that the exact location cannot be known.
GPRS module is used to get exact location of the broken rail track.
ARM7 controller is also used owning to is low cost and less power
consumption it also decreases the time used in detecting cracks.

3.3 Railway Machine-Vision Inspection Systems

Railway applications of machine-vision technology that were previously developed or are
under development at UIUC have three main elements (Figure1). The first element is the
image acquisition system, in which digital cameras are used to obtain images or video in
the visible or infrared spectrum. The next component is the image analysis system, where
the images or videos are processed using machine-vision algorithms that identify specific
items of interest and assess the condition of the detected items. The final component is
the data analysis system, which compares and verifies whether or not the condition of
track features or mechanical components comply with parameters specified by the
individual railroad or the FRA. This component will also record and compare data needed
for trend analysis.

Figure 1. Primary Components of a Machine Vision System

The advantages of machine vision include greater objectivity and consistency as
compared to manual (i.e. visual) inspection, and the ability to record and organize large
quantities of visual data in a quantitative format. Gathering and organizing quantitative
data facilitates analysis of the health of track or vehicle components over both time and

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space. These features, combined with data archiving and recall capabilities, provide
powerful trending capabilities in addition to the enhanced inspection capability itself.
Some disadvantages of machine vision include difficulties in coping with unusual or
unforeseen circumstances (e.g. unique track components) and the need to control or
augment variable outdoor lighting conditions typical of the railroad environment.

3.4 Train-Mounted GPR

A technique based on Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is used for obtaining quantitative
information about the depth and degree of deterioration of the track. This paper aims at
automating the processing and interpretation of data to the extent whereby on-site
interpretations may be achieved with minimal intervention of the expert. This is done
through the development of new image and signal processing tools specifically for GPR
data and the range of anomalies found on the track bed. For monitoring track conditions
and other infrastructure assets the most efficient way is by means of a train, which can
collect data for many parameters simultaneously, where possible at normal line speed. A
multichannel ground- penetrating radar system is presented in the paper which is capable
of operating at speeds of up to 200 kmph. A road-rail variant of the system is also
presented which can collect up to 6 simultaneous continuous channels across the track,
and can deliver on-site interpretation of ballast thickness and quality, irregularities, weak
spots and utilities. Novel multivariate signal and image processing techniques are used
that can automatically detect, quantify and map variations in ballast depth and condition.
To enable automatic characterization and classification of regions of interest within the
radargrams, multi-resolution texture analysis techniques are applied

TECHNOLOGY INVOLVED:

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Fig 2. Block diagram of the proposed rail inspection

system.
It has three main elements the first element is the image acquisition system, in which
digital cameras are used to obtain images or video in the visible or infrared spectrum.
The next component is the image analysis system, where the images or videos are
processed using machine-vision algorithms that identify specific items of interest and
assess the condition of the detected items. The final component is the data analysis
system, which compares and verifies whether or not the condition of track features or
mechanical components comply with parameters specified by the individual railroad or
the FRA. This component will also record and compare data needed for trend analysis.

Next, we integrate the evidence from multiple information sources, including cameras,
Global Positioning System (GPS), and distance measurement instrument (DMI), and
apply a global optimization approach to further improve the component detection
accuracy. Both the cross-object spatial constraint, as enforced by the sequential structure
of rail tracks, and the cross frame and cross-view constraints in camera streams are
applied during this optimization process. Finally, anchor conditions are assessed.

4. DATA COLLECTION
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4.1 Image and Video Acquisition :

Collecting images and video of components to be inspected is a critical part in the
development of the this system. There are important trade-offs between where the
components to be inspected are located in the view, how many components can be seen in
a single view, and also what views are required to perform the desired inspections. Views
of the components must not only show the entire component in its functional situation,
but also be conducive to obtaining measurements during the inspection of these
components. In addition, the cameras must be placed to provide views that permit the
algorithms to consistently and reliably detect the track components of interest.
Once viewing angles are determined, another challenge is to collect images of
components that are deformed or defective. However, due to the scarcity of defects, the
number of violations that can be found locally are far fewer than the examples needed to
properly develop a machine vision system. Therefore, methods for finding or creating
these conditions must be addressed.
Fig. 1 shows the block diagram of the overall data process. Specifically, given four video
streams captured by cameras focusing on four different views of the rails, namely, left
field view, left gauge view, right gauge view, and right field view we first detect all
necessary components from each of them by applying various image and video analytics.
Note that, as the heads of anchors only appear in gauge views, anchors are only detected
from the gauge view streams; however, both tie and tie plate will be detected from all
four video streams. Next, we integrate the evidence from multiple information sources,
including cameras, Global Positioning System (GPS), and distance measurement
instrument (DMI), and apply a global optimization approach to further improve the
component detection accuracy. Both the cross-object spatial constraint, as enforced by the
sequential structure of rail tracks, and the cross frame and cross-view constraints in
camera streams are applied during this optimization process.

4.2 Virtual Track Model for Initial Algorithm Development

An important consideration in the development of the image acquisition system is the
placement of cameras to acquire suitable images of desired components in their
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functional settings. Securing time to test the image acquisition system on active track
during the developmental phases proved difficult, so a virtual track model (VTM) was
created. The VTM used American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way
Association (AREMA) recommended practices for the design of track components to
model FRA Class 4 and 5 track and included sections of both tangent and curved track.
(AAR clearance plates were incorporated into the VTM to ensure camera placements
were in feasible locations .
The angles of the virtual cameras were then adjusted until they enabled viewing of the
relevant track components and allowed assessment of the conditions of interest that were
conducive to algorithm development. The VTM camera view experimentation resulted in
the selection of two initial camera views: the lateral view (Figure 4A) and the over-therail view (Figure 4B) (1, 2). The lateral view provides a good view of tie plates, spikes
and anchors. The over-the-rail view provides perpendicular views of the spike and
anchors to combine with the lateral view for increasing the accuracy of the
measurements. In addition, it also provides a view of the ties for future inspection tasks.

A: Lateral view showing view of simulated

track and tie plate

B: Over-the-rail view showing both sides

of the simulated tie plate and crib ballest

Figure 3. Virtual Camera Views

4.3 Track Cart for Field Video Acquisition

Beyond the virtual images, a method to capture video that would be representative of
future cameras attached to a track inspection vehicle, was needed for further development of
the machine-vision inspection algorithms. For this reason, and the need to minimize the use

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of high-rail vehicles and mainline track capacity, an experimental data acquisition system
referred to as the Video Track Cart (VTC) was designed for collecting continuous video of

track sections of interest on low-density track.

A: Over-the-rail View
Fig. 4

B: Lateral View

Initial Camera Views

5. ALGORITHM DEVELOPMENT AND DATA ANLYSIS

SYSTEM
5.1 Track Inspection Algorithms
Early algorithm development focused on spike and anchor detection and defect
recognition. These algorithms can be summarized as a coarse-to-fine approach for
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detecting objects. We first locate the track components with little variability in
appearance and predictable locations (e.g. the rail), and then locate objects that are
subject to high appearance variability (e.g. spike heads and anchors) in subsequent stages.
This increases the robustness of component detection by restricting the search space for
the smaller components, whose appearances can vary.To further increase robustness to
changing environmental conditions and changes in object appearance (e.g. differing
material types or corrosion), we have selected features that do not rely on a specific
spatial description, but rather a configuration of simple, local features that are known to
be valuable in classification. The simple, local features that we use include edges and
Gabor features. Edges are frequently used to detect objects in machine vision since object
boundaries often generate sharp changes in brightness (21). Image gradients (edges)
should be consistent among differing ties and rails, but unanticipated track obstacles
could create unanticipated edges, causing difficulty for the algorithms. For this reason,
texture information from the ballast, tie, and steel was incorporated into the edge-based
algorithm to improve its robustness. This approach relied on texture classification using
Gabor filters, which produced low-level texture features. Gabor filtering is used to
summarize two-dimensional spatial frequencies, and this can be used in texture
discrimination.

5.2 Image Decomposition

Since we operate using a coarse-to-fine approach, we decompose the image beginning
with the rail, which is the largest, most consistently detectable object. Then, we
differentiate ballast texture from non-ballast texture using Gabor filtering. Labeled
examples of ballast, tie, and steel textures were created using previously stored images
(Figure 5). When presented with a previously unseen image, texture patches are extracted
and classified as either ballast or non-ballast. This classification incurs some errors
due to foreign objects and other image noise, and the patches do not necessarily occur on
object boundaries. Though the boundaries are inexact and the classification imperfect, in
all test images, the tie, rail, and ballast areas were reliably isolated for subsequent
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processing.

Figure 5. Template Images of Specific Ballast, Rail, and Tie Textures Used for
Image Processing

After isolating the foreground portion of the tie, an accurate boundary for both the tie
plate and tie must be obtained to determine if an anchor has moved from its proper
position. the dimensions of the tie plate can be compared to the image to calibrate its
scale for defect measurement estimations. In order to capture lateral views of the gauge
side and the field side of both rails, we use four cameras in total. All four cameras are
connected on the same FireWire bus, which controls the time-synchronization between
cam-eras with high accuracy. The field of view of each camera are set to 24 inches to
guarantee 50% overlap of images when traveling at 10 mph. For this camera setting, at
each time point, each side of each tie plate is seen by only one camera, a tie will be seen
by all four cameras, and the anchors will be seen only by the two gauge view cameras.

5.3 Tie and Anchor Inspection

5.3.1 Tie Plate Detection:

To detect tie plates, we applied the same approach presented in [6]. Specifically:
1. Use Hough transform to detect two dominant horizon-tal lines in the image, which
correspond to two horizontal edges of the tie plate.
2. Find the two vertical edges of the tie plate as follows.
For the image region between the two detected horizontal lines, compute its edge map
using the Sobel operator, then sum up the edge magnitude for each column.
For each column, sum up all magnitudes within a window that is centered on it. The
window size approximately equals the width of a tie plate (assumed to be fixed).
Find the two minimums in the above plot, corresponding to the tie plates left and right
vertical edges
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5.3.2 Tie Detection

After tie plates are detected, we implement a simple and robust approach for tie
detection. The upper horizontal edge of the tie is aligned with the upper edge of the tie
plate. The lower horizontal edge of the tie usually is aligned with the bottom boundary of
the image. The remaining task is to identified two near-vertical edges of the tie:
1.Use Hough transform to detect near-vertical lines in close proximity of the vertical
edges of detected tie plates.
2.For each detected vertical line, compute the mean in-tensity difference between its left
image region and its right image region. The intuition is that the tie surface is uniformly
texture, and so is the ballast surface on the two sides of the tie, however the texture of the
tie and the ballast are very different.
3.Select the two lines with max distance computed in step 2, corresponding to the left and
right edges of the tie . Note that if tie plate is not detected in a frame, the search area for
the vertical lines becomes the whole image, in which case tie detection may suffer from
higher false positive rate. We then represent each detected tie as a rectangular bounding
box. Although the polygon formed by the four detected lines are not always rectangular, it
can be closely approximated by a rectangle.

5.3.3 Anchor Detection

Detecting anchors is a crucial step towards detecting anchor defects (shift, spread) and
anchor pattern compliance exceptions, which are potential causes of derailment. We
implement a learning-based anchor detector based on the Adaboost discriminative
classifier. We observe that a long track segment may include multiple subsegments, each
with a different type of anchor. Training only one single cascade classifier for all
subclasses of anchors would de-crease its discriminative power, due to high in-class
variability of anchors. As opposed to the standard Adaboost algorithm that used a single
cascade classifier, we em-ploy multiple cascade classifiers, somewhat similar to that
introduced in as depicted in Figure. Specifically, we train multiple binary classifiers, each
corresponds to a subclass of anchors. For detection, we employ a model-switching
mechanism as follows. We keep all classifiers running simultaneously, but at any time
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point we only return the detection results from one selected classifier - the one with the
highest number of detections in the last 50 frames. For each frame, we apply a sliding
window detection ap-proach within a ROI, which is defined to be the horizontal image
stripe covering the region around the lower edge of the rail, where anchors should be
installed. The width of the stripe equals the image width.

5.3.4 Anchor Condition Assessment

After anchors are detected and located, the next step is to assess their conditions. An
anchor is considered shifted if it is more than 1 inch away from its associated tie
horizontally (Figure 6 (a)). A spread occurs when the horizontal distance between two
anchors of the same tie is 4 inches more than the tie width (Figure 6 (b)), i.e.: D1 + D2 =
D W 4 inches. Therefore a spread of an anchor pair is automatically obtained by
computing the shift values of each anchor in the pair. Both shifts and spreads are
considered track defects, since they are strong evidence that the rail at that location is
running (unstable).

Figure 6. Definition of anchor shift (a) and spread (b).

Pixel-Inch Calibration
Since shifts and spreads are defined in inches, while the anchor-tie distance is
computed in pixels, we have to be able to reliably convert distances from pixels to
inches in order to accurately detect shifts and spreads. Due to wide angle fisheye
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distortion, the pixel to inch mapping is not uniform for all columns in the image. We
take advantage of the fact that the width of the tie plates are fixed at 7:5 inches. We annotate the bounding boxes for roughly 3; 000 tie plates for each gauge-view cameras.
Since were mainly interested in the horizontal distance, we plot the tie plates width
val-ues in pixels with respect to the X coordinate of their loca-tions. We quantize the X
coordinates to 20 different bins. The conversion curve is fitted by performing bin
averaging for each of the 20 bins and followed by linear interpola-tion. The resulted
curve allows us to map an arbitrary im-age pixel to inches, given its column index. The
pixel-inch mapping function roughly approxi-mates a quadratic function. typically be
visible in two frames when traveling at speed, and while the vehicle is still accelerating
components can be detected in many consecutive frames.

Cross-view Matching:
At any time point a tie can be seen by as many as four camera views. When the
expected position of a tie plate moves out of the cameras field of view, we attempt to
match the tie plate with tie plates from other views that have also finished passing the
field of view. Pairs of tie plates are matched by comparing their positions in frames
where both tie plates were present. Tie plates are matched iteratively in an attempt to
build up a set of detections in all four views representing one complete tie. If a
complete set of tie plate detections cannot be found, and some tie plates expected
position moves further outside the field of view we assume tie plate detection failed for
the missing view(s) and report the largest set of tie plates found as a complete tie with
missing data. If anchors were found at all four positions on the combined tie, we say
the tie has boxed anchors and can maintain a count of ties with boxed anchors to
evaluate compliance with railroad safety rules.
For any rail track geographical location, we need to obtain the geo-reference data
which contain the required anchor pattern for that specific geo-location, which is indexed
by milepost and footage, or GPS latitude and longitude. Based on such data, for any given
100-foot track that is captured in the video, we will know exactly what is its target anchor
pattern by matching the GPS data. To detect compliance exception, we first count the
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total number of boxed ties for every 100-foot rail track (denoted by C). A boxed tie is a
tie with all 4 anchors in normal (not shifted) condition. We then compare the tie count
with the required number (denoted by R). If the count is smaller than 85% of the
requirement, i.e. (R C)=R >= 15%, then a compliance-level exception is declared.

5.3.5 Anchor Pattern Compliance Exception Detection:

Detecting compliance exceptions for railroad tracks is expected to achieve a high
detection rate and low false pos-itive rate. A compliance exception negatively affects the
rail safety at the sequence level, thus a failure to detect any single one of those can
potentially leads to grave conse-quences. On the other hand, verifying a compliance
excep-tion requires a lot of time and resource for a railroad com-pany, since it involves
visually scanning a 100-foot track segment. With a high false positive rate, it would be
very challenging for human inspectors to scan through all the re-ported exceptions to find
true ones. From our own investigation with railroad companies, the desired false positive
rate for compliance exception detection is 1 false positive per 1 hour of inspection at 95%
detection rate.
Since there are no true exception in the 3-mile track we used in earlier tests, we
performed this test on an 1-hour video captured from a different rail track at a different
time. For this one-hour video, there are 3 genuine compliance exceptions. Our system
detected all of them, achieving 100 % detection rate, while generating 3 false positives
per hour. This is a very promising result compared to the desired performance from
railroad companies.

Experimental Results:
Component
Tie plate

Precision
99:3%

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Recall
100%

Automatic Rail track inspection and assessment

Tie
Anchor

88.2%
96:5%

82.3%
96.7%

Conclusion
This paper has described our recent engagement with a railroad company to develop a
real-time automatic vision based rail inspection system. Specifically, the system is able to
robustly detect important rail components with high accuracy and efficiency based on
visual, location, DMI, and contextual information. We have further discussed anchor
exception detection at both tie and compliance levels. Quantitative analysis performed on
a large video data set captured with different track and lighting conditions has
demonstrated very encouraging performance. The main challenge for us in the near future
is to handle scenarios in which heavy shadows and light overexposure exist in the videos.
In addition, we believe that our current tie detection approach needs to be further
improved, and the global component optimization approach needs to be evaluated on
other rail objects other than the tie plate. Third, we will conduct more extensive testing

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covering longer railroad tracks with varying defect conditions. Inspection for other rail
objects such as spikes, spike holes, and joint bars needs to be developed as well.
Finally, we need to enhance our algorithms with a potentially
modified imaging system to accommodate a faster and more desirable inspection speed
(e.g., 40 km/h). Controlled illumination of the rail infrastructure will be also explored to
avoid ambient lighting artifacts. Finally, we would like to note the following: 1) the
object detection and optimization approaches that we proposed here can be either applied
readily or with minor tunings to other rail fastening systems and 2) while the vision
algorithms that we developed are finely tuned toward rail track structure and components,
the encouraging results we achieved have demonstrated the applicability of machine
vision technology to real applications in the general transportation domain (such as the
advanced driver assistance system).

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Automatic Rail track inspection and assessment

using machine-vision technology. In ICMR, 2011.

[6] H. Hsieh, N. Chen, and C. Liao. Visual recognition system of elastic rail clips for
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