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Abstract The accurate detection of tunnel lining cracks and prompt identification of their primary causes are critical for maintaining tunnel availability. The advancement of deep learning, particularly in the domain of convolutional neural network (CNN) for image segmentation, has made tunnel lining crack detection more feasible. However, the CNN-based technique for tunnel lining crack detection commonly prioritizes increasing algorithmic complexity to enhance detection accuracy, posing a challenge in balancing the accuracy of detection and the efficiency of the algorithm. Motivated by the superior performance of Unet in image segmentation, this paper proposes a lightweight tunnel lining crack detection model named Mini-Unet, which refined the Unet architecture and utilized depthwise separable convolutions (DSConv) to replace some standard convolution layers. In the optimization of the proposed model parameters, applying a hybrid loss function that integrated dice loss and cross-entropy loss effectively tackled the imbalance between crack and background categories. Several models were set up to contrast with Mini-Unet and the experimental results were analyzed. Mini-Unet achieves a mean intersection over union (MIoU) of 60.76%, a mean precision of 84.18%, and a frame per second (FPS) of 5.635, respectively. Mini-Unet outperforms several mainstream models, enabling rapid detection while maintaining identified accuracy and facilitating the practical application of AI power for real-time tunnel lining crack detection.

The accurate detection of tunnel lining cracks and prompt identification of their primary causes are critical for maintaining tunnel availability. The advancement of deep learning, particularly in the domain of convolutional neural network (CNN) for image segmentation, has made tunnel lining crack detection more feasible. However, the CNN-based technique for tunnel lining crack detection commonly prioritizes increasing algorithmic complexity to enhance detection accuracy, posing a challenge in balancing the accuracy of detection and the efficiency of the algorithm. Motivated by the superior performance of Unet in image segmentation, this paper proposes a lightweight tunnel lining crack detection model named Mini-Unet, which refined the Unet architecture and utilized depthwise separable convolutions (DSConv) to replace some standard convolution layers. In the optimization of the proposed model parameters, applying a hybrid loss function that integrated dice loss and cross-entropy loss effectively tackled the imbalance between crack and background categories. Several models were set up to contrast with Mini-Unet and the experimental results were analyzed. Mini-Unet achieves a mean intersection over union (MIoU) of 60.76%, a mean precision of 84.18%, and a frame per second (FPS) of 5.635, respectively. Mini-Unet outperforms several mainstream models, enabling rapid detection while maintaining identified accuracy and facilitating the practical application of AI power for real-time tunnel lining crack detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]