Efflorescence assessment using hyperspectral imaging for concrete structures

Efflorescence is a phenomenon primarily caused by a carbonation process in concrete structures. Efflorescence can cause concrete degradation in the long term; therefore, it must be accurately assessed by proper inspection. Currently, the assessment is performed on the basis of visual inspection or image-based inspection, which may result in the subjective assessment by the inspectors. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed for the objective and quantitative assessment of concrete efflorescence using hyperspectral imaging (HSI). HSI acquires the full electromagnetic spectrum of light reflected from a material, which enables the identification of materials in the image on the basis of spectrum. Spectral angle mapper (SAM) that calculates the similarity of a test spectrum in the hyperspectral image to a reference spectrum is used to assess efflorescence, and the reference spectral profiles of efflorescence are obtained from theUSGS spectral library. Field tests were carried out in a real building and a bridge. For each experiment, efflorescence assessed by the proposed approach was compared with that assessed by image-based approach mimicking conventional visual inspection. Performance measures such as accuracy, precision, and recall were calculated to check the performance of the proposed approach. Performance-related issues are discussed for further enhancement of the proposed approach.