A Segmentation Algorithm for Rock Fracture Detection

Recognition of rock fractures is crucial in many rock engineering applications. In order to successfully applying automatic image processing techniques for the problem of rock fracture detection and description, the key (and hardest task) is the robust image segmentation of rock fractures. A one-pass valley-edge detection algorithm (“valley” or (“ridge”) means here finding locally dark (or bright) line-like or curve-like features) was studied. The image segmentation algorithm is for delineating rock fractures based on multiple scale and valley-edge detection techniques. Results indicate that this approach is useful in this domain of images.