Automated defect detection in sewer closed circuit television images using histograms of oriented gradients and support vector machine

•Technique enables automated defect detection in sewer CCTV inspection images.•Technique employs histograms of oriented gradients and support vector machine.•Segmentation method that identifies regions of interest (ROI) in the image is proposed.•Performance of linear and RBF SVM classifiers is compared.•Results from actual CCTV videos demonstrate the robustness of the proposed technique.

Condition assessment of municipal sewer pipes using closed circuit television (CCTV) inspections is known to be time consuming, costly, and prone to errors primarily due to operator fatigue or novicity. Automated detection of defects can provide a valuable tool for ensuring the quality, accuracy, and consistency of condition data, while reducing the time and cost of the inspection process. This paper presents an efficient pattern recognition algorithm to support automated detection and classification of pipe defects in images obtained from conventional CCTV inspection videos. The algorithm employs the histograms of oriented gradients (HOG) and support vector machine (SVM) to identify pipe defects. The algorithm involves two main steps: (1) image segmentation to extract suspicious regions of interest (ROI) that represent candidate defect areas; and (2) classification of the ROI using SVM classifier that was trained using sets of HOG features extracted from positive and negative examples of the defect. Proposed algorithm is applied to the problem of detecting tree root intrusions. The performance of linear and radial basis function SVM classifiers evaluated. The algorithm was tested on a set of actual CCTV videos obtained from the cities of Regina and Calgary in Canada. Experimental results demonstrated the viability and robustness of the algorithm.