Automatic fusion of visible and infrared images taken from different perspectives for diagnostics of power lines

Abstract

Power transmission lines are ones of technical structures that are needed to be diagnosed regularly. Inspections very often are performed with use of various types of cameras, primarily vision and infrared (IR) ones. The author of this paper proposes an approach to automated fusion of visible and IR images that were taken from different perspectives. Such an operation enables automated merging and matching of such a pair of images as well as returning needed information about a potential failure presence and its location in a single image. The algorithm is based on Speeded Up Robust Features detection and is scale- and rotate-invariant. The method has brought satisfying results since the vast majority of considered cases of pairs of images were merged properly and a failure, visible as a hot spot, was additionally highlighted and spatially localised in resulting images, which hence facilitates interpretation of results of inspection with respect to analysis of the separate images. This approach enables automation of detection, localisation and visualisation of a failure or abnormality in operation of power lines. It can be applied for the purposes of diagnostics of power transmission lines as well as other industrial applications, e.g. inspections of buildings, bridges, pipelines, etc.