The Effect of Data Augmentation on Performance of Custom and Pre-Trained CNN Models for Crack Detection
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Data augmentation is one of the effective solutions to improve the performance of machine learning models in general and deep learning in particular. Data augmentation techniques bring different effects to each model, but very few studies have considered this issue. This study investigated the effect of five distinct data augmentation strategies on a custom-built Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and nine pre-trained CNN models for crack detection. All ten models were initially trained on a reference dataset of unaugmented images, followed by separate experiments using the augmented datasets. The results show that the pre-trained models, especially VGG-16, EfficientNet-B7, Xception, DenseNet-201, and EfficientNet-B0, consistently achieved greater than 98% in accuracy across all augmentation techniques. Meanwhile, the custom-built CNN was very sensitive to illumination changes and noise. Image rotation and cropping have minimal negative impact and sometimes improve performance. The findings demonstrate that combining data augmentation with state-of-the-art pre-trained models offers a powerful and efficient alternative to the reliance on large-scale datasets for accurate crack detection using CNNs.
Source: Applied Sciences
DOI: 10.3390/app152212321
Institutions: Nigerian Army University Biu, University of Minho
Language: English
Subfield: Civil and Structural Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,896
OpenAlex ID: W4416414264