CrackLabel: A Thresholding-Based Crack Labeling Tool for Asphalt Pavement Images

In an image classification system based on deep learning, a training dataset is a set of labelled images and is often composed of a large number of images. Image labelling tool is usually used to facilitate in creating the training dataset used by the classifier during the learning phase. This paper presents a new image labelling tool called CrackLabel that can automatically label the cracks in the asphalt pavement images. A specially designed image thresholding method called the Global and Lower Quartile Average Intensity (GLQAI) method is utilised. In this study, the training dataset is developed by using real pavement images that resized to 1024×768 resolution. First, crack images are automatically segmented into 768 small patches with 32×32 resolution (pixel). Then, a threshold-based method is applied to automatically segment these patches into two classes which are crack and non-crack patches. The image thresholding method based on the average of global average intensity (GAI) and lower quartile intensity (LQI), namely GLQAI is proposed for this task. Next, the labelling process is performed by assigning patches associated with the crack and background into the crack and non-crack folder, respectively. Finally, the performance of CrackLabel is benchmarked by comparing the results with the manual label crack images by human experts, and three commonly used thresholding methods; Otsu, Kapur and Kittler-Illingworth thresholding. Experimental results show that the proposed thresholding method achieved the best classification rate among various thresholding methods with 94.50%, 93.60% 94.00% and 94.05% for recall, precision, accuracy, and F-score respectively. In conclusion, it is observed that the proposed method using the newly threshold algorithm is very effective in label images into the crack and non-crack patches to maximize the training performance.