Multi-Sensor Attention Networks for Automated Subsurface Delamination Detection in Concrete Bridge Decks

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Moayedikia, Alireza, Moayedikia, Amirhossein
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866910013832822784
author Moayedikia, Alireza
Moayedikia, Amirhossein
author_facet Moayedikia, Alireza
Moayedikia, Amirhossein
contents Subsurface delaminations in concrete bridge decks remain undetectable through conventional visual inspection, necessitating automated non-destructive evaluation methods. This work introduces a deep learning framework that integrates Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Infrared Thermography (IRT) through hierarchical attention mechanisms. Our architecture employs temporal self-attention to process GPR electromagnetic signals, spatial attention to analyze thermal imagery, and cross-modal attention with learnable embeddings to model inter-sensor correspondences. We integrate Monte Carlo dropout-based uncertainty quantification, decomposing prediction confidence into model uncertainty and data-driven uncertainty components. Testing across five real-world bridge datasets from the SDNET2021 benchmark reveals that our approach delivers substantial performance gains over single-sensor and concatenation-based baselines when applied to balanced or moderately imbalanced data distributions. Comprehensive ablation analysis confirms that cross-modal attention mechanisms contribute meaningful improvements beyond unimodal attention alone. Critically, we identify and characterize specific failure modes: under extreme class imbalance, attention-based architectures demonstrate susceptibility to majority class bias, indicating scenarios where simpler architectural choices may prove more robust. Our findings equip practitioners with empirically-grounded criteria for selecting appropriate fusion strategies based on dataset characteristics, rather than promoting universal architectural superiority.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_20113
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Multi-Sensor Attention Networks for Automated Subsurface Delamination Detection in Concrete Bridge Decks
Moayedikia, Alireza
Moayedikia, Amirhossein
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Image and Video Processing
Subsurface delaminations in concrete bridge decks remain undetectable through conventional visual inspection, necessitating automated non-destructive evaluation methods. This work introduces a deep learning framework that integrates Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Infrared Thermography (IRT) through hierarchical attention mechanisms. Our architecture employs temporal self-attention to process GPR electromagnetic signals, spatial attention to analyze thermal imagery, and cross-modal attention with learnable embeddings to model inter-sensor correspondences. We integrate Monte Carlo dropout-based uncertainty quantification, decomposing prediction confidence into model uncertainty and data-driven uncertainty components. Testing across five real-world bridge datasets from the SDNET2021 benchmark reveals that our approach delivers substantial performance gains over single-sensor and concatenation-based baselines when applied to balanced or moderately imbalanced data distributions. Comprehensive ablation analysis confirms that cross-modal attention mechanisms contribute meaningful improvements beyond unimodal attention alone. Critically, we identify and characterize specific failure modes: under extreme class imbalance, attention-based architectures demonstrate susceptibility to majority class bias, indicating scenarios where simpler architectural choices may prove more robust. Our findings equip practitioners with empirically-grounded criteria for selecting appropriate fusion strategies based on dataset characteristics, rather than promoting universal architectural superiority.
title Multi-Sensor Attention Networks for Automated Subsurface Delamination Detection in Concrete Bridge Decks
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Image and Video Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.20113