A Dark Target Detection Method Based on the Adjacency Effect: A Case Study on Crack Detection

Dark target detection is important for engineering applications but the existing methods do not consider the imaging environment of dark targets, such as the adjacency effect. The adjacency effect will affect the quantitative applications of remote sensing, especially for high contrast images and images with ever-increasing resolution. Further, most studies have focused on how to eliminate the adjacency effect and there is almost no research about the application of the adjacency effect. However, the adjacency effect leads to some unique characteristics for the dark target surrounded by a bright background. This paper utilizes these characteristics to assist in the detection of the dark object, and the low-high threshold detection strategy and the adaptive threshold selection method under the assumption of Gaussian distribution are designed. Meanwhile, preliminary case experiments are carried out on the crack detection of concrete slope protection. Finally, the experiment results show that it is feasible to utilize the adjacency effect for dark target detection.