This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2018.2828811, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
An Estimation Method of Defect Size from MFL
Image Using Visual Transformation Convolutional
Neural Network
Senxiang Lu, Jian Feng, Member, IEEE, Huaguang Zhang, Fellow, IEEE, Jinhai Liu, Member, IEEE,
and Zhenning Wu
Abstract—In most current nondestructive testing systems,
Magnetic flux leakage (MFL) method is widely used in various
industry fields, where the structural integrity of specimens is of
vital importance. The estimation of defect size in specimen from
the MFL measurements is a key and difficult problem. The tra-
ditional methods have low precision, because feature extraction
procedure relies on prior knowledge and the ability of designer.
Inspired by the idea of convolutional neural network (CNN), a
novel visual transformation convolutional neural network (VT-
CNN) is proposed in this paper to overcome the limitation of
traditional method in feature extraction procedure. By adding
a visual transformation layer according to the characteristics of
MFL measurements, the VT-CNN can distinguish defect feature
with different sizes more accurately. Moreover, since the VT-
CNN method is designed based on deep learning theory, more
industrial big data with accurate label should be used to train the
network. Due to the difficulty of making real industrial big data,
a novel mesher magnetic dipole model is designed to simulate
this industrial process. A large simulated MFL measurements
of irregular defects produced by this model can increase the
number of training samples and improve the robustness of the
network. Experiments to estimate natural corrosion defects on
real industrial pipelines are performed to validate the proposed
framework. The experimental results are illustrated in detail,
which highlights the superiority of the proposed method in
industrial applications.
Index Terms—Fault detection, Magnetic flux leakage, Convo-
lutional neural network, Visual transformation, Mesher magnetic
dipole, Intelligence fault diagnosis.
I. I NTRODUCTION
N ONDESTRUCTIVE testing (NDT) is a widely used
analytical techniques in science and technology industry
to test the properties of a material without causing damage
[1], [2]. Magnetic flux leakage (MFL) is a magnetic method of
NDT that is used to detect defects in steel structures. The basic
principle is that a steel specimen is magnetized by a couple
of powerful magnets. At areas where there is metal loss, the
magnetic field leaks from the specimen to the surrounding air
[3], [4]. A magnetic detector like Hall sensor placed between
the poles of the magnets can detect the leakage field. Analysts
identify damaged area, estimate defect size and depict defect
profiles from MFL measurements [5], [6].
The calculation process of defect size and profiles is essen-
tial processing procedure of MFL information. The processing
S. Lu, J. Feng, H. Zhang, J. Liu Z. Wu are with School of Information
Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang, 110819, P. R.
China.
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methods mainly include information transformation, extrac-
tion, classification and construction of mapping, etc. For the
practical industrial applications, the defect size can be used to
guide maintenance and the calculation of defect size is faster
than the calculation of defect profiles. Therefore, the accurate
estimation of defect size is the primary objective of solving
industrial fault diagnosis. In addition, the accurate defect size
can be used as an initial iterative value to further calculate the
defect profiles [7], [8]. Two major research directions have
been proposed to address this issue, including model based
and model free.
Model based methods usually apply physical model to
obtain MFL simulation values of assumed defect. The physical
model can be analytical model [9], numerical model such as
the finite-element method (FEM) [10], neural networks [11],
[12], and so on. Compared the difference between simulation
values and original measurements, the assumed defect size is
modified iteratively in order to approach the real size. Many
optimization algorithms are applied to the comparing process,
such as space mapping optimization [9], Gauss-Newton opti-
mization [10], combination of gradient descent and simulated
annealing [11], cuckoo search optimization [4], and so on.
Model based methods are accurate and quite suitable for
handling the defects with complex shape, but they are difficult
to use in industrial applications. Due to the complexity of
industrial conditions, the physical parameters of the model
can hardly be obtained. The errors of the physical model will
decrease the precision rate of final results. Furthermore, it is
time consuming in the industrial fault diagnosis.
Another method called model free mainly relies on the
establishment of a mapping relationship between the features
of measurements and the defect size by data fitting or train-
ing method of networks, ignoring the underlying physical
process. To extract representative features from the complex
MFL measurements, numerous processing approaches have
been developed such as statistical analysis [13], [14], Fourier
transform [15], wavelet transform [16]. The specific features
generally include peak-to-valley flux density [17], [18], valley-
to-valley distance, [19], signal area [20], and so on. The
relationships are generally described as a nonlinear equation
[17], [18], [20] or learning network [19]. These model free
methods can estimate the size of defects more rapidly and
are more suitable for industrial applications. But the results
of estimated size are not quite satisfactory, especially for
the defects with complex shape. The main reason for the
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low accuracy is that much useful information hidden within a threshold, the signal has two peaks. On the contrary, if the
the measurements will be lost during the feature extraction defect length is less than the threshold, the signal has only
process, because the feature extraction methods depend on one peak.
most of the prior knowledge [21], and it is often artificially-
designed [22], [23]. Therefore, how to solve the problems of
information extraction and processing are the key to obtain 160
high-precision defect size. signal area

MFL Responce(Gs)
140
To overcome the problems above and improve the estimated peak-to-valley
flux density
120
accuracy, a precise estimation method of defect size from
MFL measurements using visual transformation convolutional 100

neural network (VT-CNN) has been proposed in this paper. 80 valley-to-valley distance 60
40
Inspired from the traditional convolutional neural network 20 40 60
20

(CNN) [24], a novel layer called visual transformation layer Axi. distance(mm) Cir. distance(mm)

has been involved in the CNN to highlight the characteristic
information of defect MFL measurements. The visual trans-
formation layer can transform the original MFL measurements
to a three-dimensional image at any angle of view. These
transformed images can better describe the contour of defect
measurements in three-dimensional space. It can improve the
identity of input sample set, and increase the accuracy of the
training network. Since the CNN method is designed based
on deep learning theory, large number of training samples
are needed [25]. Therefore, a novel mesher magnetic dipole
model is designed to produce training samples. Compared
with typical magnetic dipole model, this new model can not
only establish rectangular defect model, but also can establish
irregular defect model by meshing the defect to a small
rectangle element. A huge number of MFL data with accurate
labels of defect size simulated by the mesher magnetic dipole
model can be used as training samples for VT-CNN and
improve the robustness of VT-CNN. This method can not only
reduce the demand of prior knowledge, but also improve the
estimated accuracy of defect size and make it more adaptive
in industrial systems.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the
principle of MFL testing and the problem presentation are
introduced. The architecture of the proposed VT-CNN for
estimating defect size is presented in Section III. Then, in
Section IV, the sample set including experimental data and
simulation data is described. In Section V, the training proce-
dure and simulation results are illustrated in detail. The results
of different methods are compared and discussed in Section
VI. At last, concluding remarks are provided in Section VII.
II. PRINCIPLE OF MFL TESTING AND PROBLEM
PRESENTATION
The basic principle of the MFL testing is that a powerful
magnet is used to magnetize the ferromagnetic metal. At areas
where there is a defect, a high fraction of magnetic field leaks
from the wall of the defect into the air. This flux leakage is
measured by a Hall sensor and used to estimate the defect
size. Fig. 1(a) shows the MFL measurements collected from
the detector. The MFL measurements are the intensity of the
magnetic field, and the unit is Gauss. The data type of MFL
measurements is floating-point, and the sampling sensitivity
is 0.1Gs. The defect signals on each sensor have two valleys
and one or two peaks. When the defect length is greater than
(a) (b)
Fig. 1. (a) MFL measurements of the defect collected from the detector.
(Axi. represents axial and Cir. represents circumferential) (b) Gray image
after converting
Establish
Acquire Extract
Basic Information Information
Useful Information
Relationship
MFL Inversion
Abnormal area
measurement relationship
detection
collection modeling
Data Signal feature Defect size
preprocessing extraction estimation
Fig. 2. Flow chart of MFL testing in industrial applications for estimating
defect size.
The flow chart of MFL testing in industrial applications
for estimating defect size can be represented as Fig. 2. It
includes 3 information processing procedures: basic informa-
tion acquisition, useful information extraction and informa-
tion relationship establishment. Firstly, MFL measurements
obtained from industrial field need to be preprocessed. It
usually includes data correction, compensation and filtering,
and data preprocessing can improve signal to noise ratio.
Secondly, the abnormal areas of MFL measurements need to
be detected [26], and the signal features need to be extract
[17]. Signal features are designed by artificial based on the
prior knowledge, and a feature extractor is also designed to
calculated the measurement features. The features generally
include peak-to-valley flux density (the maximum absolute
differences of field density in MFL region), valley-to-valley
distance (the effective length of MFL region), signal area (the
magnetic field energy of the defect in MFL region) [19], [20],
and so on as shown in Fig. 1(a). Thirdly, an estimation model
is designed as a nonlinear equation or an intelligent network
[13]. The training or fitting process of the model needs a set
of samples with known defect size and signal features well
calculated. Finally, the results of defect size are estimated
by inputting signal features into the model. The size of the
defect consists of three dimensions which are length, width
and depth, in industrial applications. For an irregular defect
(the shape of the defect is not a cube), the length, width and

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Transactions on Industrial Informatics
depth of the outer cube of the defect geometry represent the
size of the irregular defect.
There are two factors that affect the precision of defect size
estimation. One is the structure of the estimation model. In
traditional methods, signal features are the input variables of
the model, and most of these features are artificially designed.
This structure is likely to lose the important information of
signals reducing the identifiability of the defect size. By com-
paring the results estimated by different features, the following
conclusions can be given. (1) The estimation accuracy is quite
different by choosing different features to estimate the defect
size. (2) If the selection of features is not reasonable, the
estimated size will have a large deviation compared with
the real size. For example, if the feature vectors are short
of a feature that can significantly reflect the defect length
(like ‘valley-to-valley distance’), the estimation error of the
defect length will be greatly increased. (3) If the feature
such as the max frequency (the maximum value of signal in
frequency domain, which has little relationship with MFL)
is considered, the estimation accuracy will not be increased,
but will be reduced. It shows that feature selection is a key
problem, especially for the problem of estimating defect size
in industrial pipelines.
Another key factor is the number of samples. In industrial
applications, the samples are built by imitating a series of
representative defects in specimens. Due to the high cost of
processing, the number of samples is limited. The lack of
samples will greatly affect the estimated accuracy. From the
comparison experiment that different numbers of samples are
used to train the estimation model, the estimated accuracy
is improved with the increasing of the number of samples.
The main reason for improving the accuracy is that a large
number of training samples can improve the robustness of the
estimation model effectively.
From the above analysis, the traditional method combined
feature extraction with modeling is not satisfactory in indus-
trial pipelines with the development of industrial technology.
A new method should be find to solve the above key problems
and improve the estimated accuracy.
III. A RCHITECTURE OF THE P ROPOSED M ODEL
The traditional CNN has been mainly influenced by Hubel
and Wiesels early work on the vision cortex working mecha-
nisms of mammalian brain [27]. It has been used successfully
in many different applications such as the recognition of
handwriting, printed character, face recognition, and so on.
Instead of human-designed features, CNN can automatically
mine and generate deep features of input data [28]. So, it is
one of the most effective models in settling the estimation
problem of defect size.
However, the simple application of CNN can’t get higher
accuracy and satisfy the industry requirements. The main
reason is that MFL signal is different from the recognizable
image. The magnetic field intensity of each sampling point
in test specimen is measured by Hall sensor array and stored
as MFL signal. So, the MFL signal can be converted into an
image, as shown in Fig. 1, by converting the measured value
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into gray value. It can be seen that the brightness of the image
indicates the signal amplitude. Some signal features such as
the amplitude variation trend are hard to recognize from the
image. If this image is entered directly into the CNN, the CNN
is difficult to extract useful features and estimates accurate
defect size.
In order to solve the above problems, a new VT-CNN archi-
tecture is proposed in this paper. A novel visual transformation
layer is added in the original CNN architecture to highlight
signal features. The architecture of VT-CNN consists of visual
transformation layer, convolutional layer, pooling layer, and
fully connected layer as illustrated in Fig. 3.
A. Visual transformation layer
The visual transformation layer is a novel layer proposed
in this paper for solving the issue of inconspicuous feature
of raw MFL images. As described in [29], gray values of
the raw MFL image are obtained by linear transformation of
MFL measurements. And then a two-dimensional(2D) matrix
of gray values is arranged by spatial distribution of sampling
points. The raw MFL image is shown in Fig. 1(b).
The main idea of visual transformation layer is to convert
plane images into stereograms. The positions of sampling
points are considered as X value and Y value of the stere-
ogram, and the field intensity value of MFL measurements is
considered as Z value. The stereogram of MFL image can
be drawn in different 3D visual angle as shown in Fig. 5
by using the plotting method (function ‘surf ’) in MATLAB
software. The visual angle (θvisual (Az, El)) is represented
by two angle values azimuth angle and elevation angle. The
mapping relation of the visual transformation layer is nonlinear
function as shown in Eq. 1 and 2. The main idea of the
nonlinear function is to get a transformation plane based on
the visual angle and then make the original measurements
projected to this plane.
Z( b Yb ) = kV (X,
b X, b Yb )k2 (1)
(
b Yb ) 6= f (X, Y, Z, θ);
b Yb ) = 0,
V (X,
(X,
(2)
Z(X, Y ), (X,
b Yb ) = f (X, Y, Z, θ).
where V (X, b Yb ) represents the projection vector of the original
measured value Z(X, Y ) in the new (X, b Yb ) coordinate. If
there is no point transformed on the coordinate, there is no
projection in this coordinate, and the projection vector of the
coordinate is equal to 0. X and Y represent the x-y position
of the input matrix. Z(X, Y ) represents the value of the input
matrix in the position of (X, Y ). X b and Yb represent the x-y
position of the output matrix. Z(X, Yb ) represents the value of
b b
the output matrix in the position of (X, b Yb ). k · k2 represents
the solution of 2-norm, and the function f represents rotation
equation of x-y coordinates.
Firstly, the original point needs to be projected onto the
corresponding coordinate plane as shown in Fig. 4. Secondly,
the coordinate (X,Y ) is rotated on the x-y plane, and the
rotation angle is θAz . Thirdly, the coordinate Y is rotated on
the y-z plane, and the rotation angle is θEl and the coordinate
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Transactions on Industrial Informatics

Input image V1 C2 P3 C4 P5 F6 Output

Transformed image

Visual Transformation Convolution Pooling Convolution Pooling Fully

dc@kc×kc p×p dc@kc×kc p×p Connection

Fig. 3. The architecture of the proposed visual transformation convolutional neural network.

z y z
New
Original I  Az IV  El
IV Y Z
III
Y II Z III

x
II
I
x y
y X X Y Y
(a) (b) (c)
(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 4. Diagram of coordinate rotation transformation. (a) Projection diagram.

(b) Plane x-y. (c) Plane y-z.

X stays constant. After this rotation transformation as shown

in Eq. 3, the new coordinate (X,
b Yb ) can be obtained.
(d) (e) (f)
 p  
2 2
Y Fig. 5. 3D stereogram of MFL measurements after visual transforming
 fXb (X, Y, Z, θ) = X + Y cos arctan( ) − θAz


X operation.(a) Under the visual angle (340,10). (b) Front view (0,0). (c) Left


side view (270,0). (d) Right side view (90,0). (e) Top view (0,30). (f) Upward

 q  

2 2
Z view (0,-30).
fYb (X, Y, Z, θ) = Y + Z cos arctan( ) + θEl
e


  Ye 

 p Y
Ye = X 2 + Y 2 sin arctan( ) − θAz

the network. During the training process, an initialization angle

X

(3) value needs to be set, and update in each iteration process by
where θAz and θEl represent azimuth angle and elevation the decreasing gradient algorithm. Since the function of visual
angle, respectively. [·] represents the data rounded to the transformation layer is usually non-differentiable, its gradient
nearest integer. can be written in discrete form as shown in Eq. 4.
The azimuth angle is the rotation angle on the X-Y plane. ∂E E b (θ + ∆θ) − EZb (θ)
The angle of 0 degrees and the direction of rotation need to be = Z (4)
∂θ ∆θ
defined in advance. The azimuth angle of the image in front
view as shown in Fig. 5(b) is defined to 0, and the clockwise where EZb (θ) represent the error value of output matrix in the
direction is defined as the forward rotation direction. Under visual transformation layer with the angle of θ, as shown in
this definition, the azimuth angle of left side view as shown Eq. 5.
in Fig. 5(c) is equal to 270 degrees, and the azimuth angle of EZb (θ) = kZ(θ)
b −Z bε (θ)k2 (5)
right side view as shown in Fig. 5(d) is equal to 90 degrees. where Zbε represent the output value of backpropagation in the
The elevation angle is the pitch angle in Z direction. visual transformation layer.
Overlooking direction from up to down is defined as positive
direction as shown in Fig. 5(e). On the contrary, looking up
direction is defined as negative direction as shown in Fig. 5(f). B. Convolutional layer
Finally, save this 3D figure as a gray image according to As the core building block of CNNs, the convolutional layer
a certain pixel size. The transformed images exhibit a wide usually includes two operations shown in Fig. 6.
variety of 3D morphology, when the visual angle changes. Convolution operation can improve the performance of the
The above transformation process is named as visual transfor- network by its three ideas: receptive field, sparse connectivity,
mation. Different visual angles will produce different images, and parameter sharing [30], [31]. The primary operators of
and the features of these images are not the same. So, the angle convolution operation are convolution kernels, and they can
values can be optimized through the output requirements of be revised during the network training procedure to get better

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Input Images/Maps
Convolution
Kernels
* Function
Convolution Operation Nonlinearity Operation
Fig. 6. Sketch of convolution operation and nonlinearity operation in
convolutional layer.
output feature maps. The depth (dc ) and size (kc × kc ) of
convolution kernels need to be tuned according to the size of
the raw MFL images or the accuracy of estimated results.
Nonlinearity operation follows the convolution operation,
and it makes nonlinear weighting of feature maps by an
activation function. The output feature map (H) is obtained
by adding a bias term and applying a non-linear function. It
can be denoted by Eq. 6.
H = f (W · X + b)
where W , X and b represent weight, input feature map and
bias, respectively. The commonly used nonlinear activation
function include sigmoid, tanh, rectified linear unit (ReLU),
and so on.
C. Pooling layer
As another important concept of CNNs, pooling is a form of
non-linear down-sampling [32], [33]. The pooling layer with
filters of size (p×p) is applied to discard (100−100/(p×p))%
of the activations. There are several non-linear functions to im-
plement pooling among which max and mean pooling are the
most common. Every p × p segment is represented by its max
or mean value. The advantage of pooling operation is down-
sampling the convolutional output, thus reducing the spatial
size of the representation and the amount of computation in
the network, and also control overfitting.
D. Fully connected layer
The Fully connected layer is after the convolution and
pooling operations [30], [32]. The original MFL image is
represented by a series of feature maps. Simply connect all
the feature maps to generate a new long feature vector as the
final representation of the original input. The output nodes
have several regression results, which represent the estimated
length, width and depth of the defect. The VT-CNN can’t ac-
curately calculate the length, width and depth simultaneously,
because there is no optimal visual transformation angle θ. In
order to estimate the defect size more accurately, the number
of output nodes is set to one. In practical applications, three
VT-CNNs need to be trained to estimate length, width and
depth, respectively.
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IV. SAMPLE SET
Feature Maps A. experimental data set
In order to obtain the experimental data set to train the
proposed network, an experimental platform of pipeline loop
about 800 meters has been built as shown in Fig. 7. The
pipeline loop consists of nearly 67 pipelines of X65 steel
with the diameter of 8 inches, and the thickness of the pipe
wall is 10mm. There are 300 natural corrosion defects and
700 artificial defects with known size on these pipelines. The
MFL inspection tool used to detect the pipeline loop is shown
in Fig. 8. It consists of four modules. (1) Battery module, it
provides the power during the whole testing. (2) Magnetization
and detection module, it magnetizes the pipe wall by a pair
of permanent magnets, and detects the leakage-flux density
by Hall sensor. (3) Recording module, it stores detection
information and operation status. (4) Navigation module, it
collects operation status of the detector including rotation
angle and operation mileage and so on. These four modules
are interconnected by articulating joints to adapt to the pipe
bend. Besides, the sampling frequency is 2mm per-time. In
order to make the pixel matrix of the input image as a square
matrix, the sampling number and interval in circumferential
(6) direction need to be consistent with them in axial direction. So,
the space distance between two data points in circumferential
direction is set to 2mm. The distance among sensors is 6mm
in each measurement unit. The estimated data which cannot be
directly measured between two adjacent sensors are achieved
by soft-sensing method (such as interpolation, etc.) of direct
measurements.
Inlet
Outlet
Fig. 7. Experimental platform of pipeline loop.
(3) (2)
(4)
(1)
Fig. 8. MFL inspection tool.
First, the detector is placed inside the detected pipeline from
the entrance. Next, the detector crawled from the entrance
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to the outlet under the pressure of the fluid. And then, the dipoles generate a magnetic field outside the metal, which is
detector is taken out from the outlet. Finally, the data stored equivalent to a leakage magnetic field. The magnetic field
in the recording module is exported as the experimental data. dH generated at a distance r by each element of charge
1000 experimental samples with some uncertainties and noises dp=σs dydz is given by Eq. 8.
including testing velocity, sensor liftoff, and shape irregularity dp
are collected. A picture of an artificial defect on the outside dH(x, y, z) = ·r (8)
4πr3
surface of a pipe is shown in Fig. 9(a). The MFL curves,
σms
raw MFL image and transformed MFL image are shown in x (x, y, z)= 4π ×
H  
Fig. 9(b)-(d). These 1000 MFL data can’t be directly used to √ z(x+l)
train the deep learning network based on model free method.  arctan (y−w) (x+l)2 +(y−w)2 +z2 
   
The number of samples usually need to be increased by 
 − arctan √ z(x+l)


2 2 2
generalizing the existing data. This generalization method can  (y+w) (x+l) +(y+w) +z
 
  
satisfy the requirements of the number of training samples, but 
 + arctan √ (z+d)(x+l)


2 2 2
the trained network is difficult to satisfy the estimated accuracy  (y+w) (x+l) +(y+w) +(z+d) 
 
 
of defect size in industrial applications. Therefore, a novel 
 − arctan √ (z+d)(x−l)


mesher magnetic dipole model is proposed in the following to 
  (y+w) (x−l)2 +(y+w)2 +(z+d)2


 (9)
generate simulation data and increase the number of sample 
 + arctan √ z(x−l)


2 2 2
set.  (y+w) (x−l) +(y+w) +z 
 
 
√ z(x−l)
 
 − arctan 

 (y−w) (x−l)2 +(y−w)2 +z 2 

 
(z+d)(x−l)
 
120
 + arctan √ 
W=20mm

D=3mm 2 2 2
MFL Responce(Gs)

 (y−w) (x−l) +(y−w) +(z+d) 

 
 
100
√ (z+d)(x+l)
 
− arctan 2 2 2
80 (y−w) (x+l) +(y−w) +(z+d)
L=40mm
60 60
The magnetic field H is calculated at each observation point
40
10 20 30 40
20 by integrating the magnetic field due to all charge elements
50 60
Axi. distance(mm) Cir. distance(mm) dp. Therefore, for a defect with a simple rectangular shape
(a) (b) of length 2l, width 2w, and depth d with constant polarity
extending from −l to +l in X direction, from −w to +w
in Y direction and from 0 to d in Z direction, the axial
distribution of leakage magnetic field at a point with the
coordinate (x, y, z) is obtained by Eq. 9.
The above formula can only solve the MFL problem of
rectangular defects. In order to achieve the MFL response of
defects with arbitrary profiles, the following steps should be
done. First, divide the defect into several small defects by a
mesh M. Each mesh Mi,j has a depth value as shown in Fig.
(c) (d) 10(a), and it can be considered as an independent rectangular
defect. Second, calculate the MFL response HMi,j of each
Fig. 9. MFL measurements of a artificial defect in test pipeline, and images
before and after visual transformed. (a) Defect photo. (b) MFL measurments.
small defect using Eq. 7. Third, accumulate the MFL response
(c) 2D image before visual transformed. (d) 3D image after visual transformed. of each grid by Eq. 10.
n X
X m
H(x, y, z) = HMi,j (x, y, z) (10)
B. simulation data set i=1 j=1

The electromagnetic phenomena underlying MFL systems where n and m represent the size of the mesh. The intensity
comply with Maxwells equations in a nonlinear permanent of the leakage field in a given point is approximated by a sum
magnet. This leads to Eq. 7. of the leakage fields of the corresponding set of rectangular
defects.
1
∇× ∇ × A = Js (7) The calculated MFL response of the defect with the profiles
µ in Fig. 10(a) is describe by curves, raw image and transformed
where µ, Js and A are the permeability of vacuum, the current image in Fig. 10(b). The more detailed the mesh is, the higher
density, and the magnetic vector potential, respectively. The accuracy of the simulation MFL response is. In this paper, the
magnetic flux density B = ∇ × A, and the function enforces size of the mesh is set to 1mm*1mm and the sampling interval
the Coulomb gauge ∇·A = 0, which ensures a unique solution is set to 2mm. The defect model is generated by initializing the
of equation. defect length L(from 0mm to 40mm), the defect width W(from
In analytical approaches, the magnetic leakage flux is for- 0mm to 40mm), and the defect depth D(from 0mm to the
mulated mathematically by a dipole model. These magnetic maximum of wall thickness) randomly. Next, draw a matrix M

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Transactions on Industrial Informatics

circumference distance (y-direction)(mm) 5 the whole samples do not have exactly the same sample (the
110
5 4 same input data and the same output dimension). Then the

MFL Responce(Gs)
100
3
CNN is trained according to the following several steps:
10 90 Step 1: Initialize the visual angles, convolution kernels,
2
80 weights and bias with random numbers. Select a learning rate
15
1 70 η = 0.8.
60
20 0 60 20
40 Step 2: Choose a training sample from the training set
5 10 15 20 10 20 30 40 50 60
axial distance (x-direction) (mm) Axi. distance(mm) Cir. distance(mm) randomly.
(a) (b) Step 3: Draw the transformed image V1 in the view of
θvisual by MATLAB software as shown in Fig. 11, according
to the raw training MFL image.
Step 4: Calculate the output of each convolutional and
pooling layers C2 , P3 , C4 , P5 as shown in Fig. 11.
Step 5: Calculate the output of fully connecting layer F6 .
Step 6: Calculate the output of output layer, which can be
written by Eq. 11.
XM
O = f( Fi w0 (i) + b0 ) (11)
i=1

(c) (d) where w0 and b0 represent the connection weights between the
feature layer and the output layer and the bias of the output
Fig. 10. MFL response of a simulated defect and images before and after layer, respectively. Function f is f (x) = max(0, min(1, x))
visual transformed. (a) Thermodynamic diagram of the defect depth. (b) MFL
response. (c) 2D image before visual transformed. (d) 3D image after visual which represents the activation function of output layer.
transformed. Step 7: Choose another training sample and go to Step 3
until all the samples in the training set have been trained.
Step 8: Calculate the training error, and it can be written by
with depth value in the range of L and W, and the maximum Eq. 12.
of the matrix is D. Finally, calculate the MFL response by n n
the depth matrix by using Eq. 9 and 10. 29000 simulation 1X 2 1 X 2

E= e(k) = O (k) − y(k) (12)
defects with arbitrary profiles are produced randomly and their n n
k=1 k=1
MFL responses are calculated to build the simulation data set.
Combined experiment data set with simulation data set, thirty Step 9: Update the visual angle, weights and bias by the
thousand sample data are made into the sample set to train gradient descent method in (13).
and test the proposed network. ∂E
P =P −η (13)
∂P
V. T RAINING P ROCEDURE AND S IMULATION R ESULTS where P represents the parameters that need to be updated,
The specific architecture of VT-CNN applied in this paper and it includes θvisual , wr , br , w0 and b0 .
is illustrated in Fig. 3. The pixel size of a raw input MFL Step 10: Increase the iteration number. If the iteration
image is 40*40, and the pixel size of the transformed image number is equal to the maximum value which is set previously,
is 32*32. The kernel depth and size of each convolution layer terminate the algorithm. Otherwise, go to Step 2.
are represented by dc2 = 6, dc4 = 12, kc2 = 5 and kc4 =
5. The pooling size of each pooling layer is represented by
p3 = 2 and p5 = 2. ReLU and max pooling are employed
as the nonlinear activation function and pooling function. The
specific parameters for each layer are shown in Table. I.
TABLE I
S PECIFIC PARAMETERS FOR EACH L AYER OF VT-CNN

Layer Parameter Layer Parameter

Input 1@40× 40 C4 12@10× 10
V1 1@32× 32 P5 12@5× 5
C2 6@28× 28 F6 120@1× 1 Input
P3 6@14× 14 Output 1@1× 1 V1 C2 P3 C4 P5
MFL IMAGE

Fig. 11. Output feature maps of a particular test sample.

Some data samples are selected as the training set, and the
remaining samples are used as testing set. In order to ensure All the computations are implemented in MATLAB
that there is no overlap between training set and testing set, R2017(a) on a personal computer. The output feature maps of

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Transactions on Industrial Informatics

40 40
70
60
Defect length(mm)

30 30

Defect width(mm)

Defect depth(%)
50
20 20 40
30
10 real size 10 real size
20 real size
10-fold results 10-fold results 10-fold results
5-fold results 5-fold results 10 5-fold results
0 0
0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3
Test sample number #105 Test sample number #105 Test sample number #105

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 12. Comparison results of estimated value and practical measuring. (a) Defect length. (b) Defect width. (c) Defect depth (the percentage of pipe wall
thickness).

each layer calculated from a particular test sample are shown VI. C OMPARISON AND D ISCUSSION
in Fig. 11. In order to reduce the chanciness of simulation To demonstrate the performance of the proposed method
results, 10 times 10-fold cross validation and 10 times 5-fold in MFL testing of industrial pipelines, several comparative
cross validation have been done to verify the effectiveness of experiments have been designed and the experimental results
the proposed method. These results are sorted according to have been analyzed in detail. First, the effectiveness of the
ascending order of the real size and plotted as curves shown proposed visual transformation layer has been verified by
in Fig. 12. comparing the training results of CNN and VT-CNN. Second,
The defects to be estimated include 290000 simulation de- the practicability of generating simulation data in the process
fects and 10000 real defects. The mean errors of the estimated of setting up data sets has been proved by training and testing
size are listed in Table. II. From this table, the following VT-CNN using different data sets. Third, higher accuracy
conclusions can be given. 1) The proposed VT-CNN can better can be obtained in industrial applications by comparing the
solve the estimation problem for both simulation defects and estimated results of the proposed method with other traditional
real defects. 2) For real defects, the mean estimation errors of methods.
length and width are less than 5mm, and the mean estimation
error of depth is less than 5%. The estimated accuracy satisfies
the requirements of defect detection in industrial applications. A. VT-CNN vs CNN
After a series of simulations and experiments, the projection In order to illustrate the advantages of the proposed net-
plane of θvisual is almost parallel to the direction of the work architecture, a comparison experiment of VT-CNN and
estimated dimension of defects. In practical applications, there typical CNN has been done. For typical CNN, the 2D grey
may exist a little deviation angle between the projection plane image converted from MFL measurement is considered as the
and the direction of the estimated dimension. network input and the defect size is the output. The data sets
In this view of θvisual , the original measurements can be used for training and testing are 30000 samples described in
transformed to an image. The image will be inputted into the section IV. 10 times 10-fold cross validation have been done
VT-CNN and then the VT-CNN will get better features than and the mean estimation errors of each test are shown in Fig.
traditional features. Compared with the traditional features 13.
which can only be extracted by the amplitude change of
10 25
measurements, the features of the image in the view of θvisual length of VT-CNN depth of VT-CNN
length of CNN depth of CNN
will be more conducive to estimate the defect size. The 8 width of VT-CNN
width of CNN
20

reason is that the measurements used in the traditional feature

Error(mm)

Error(%)

15
6
extraction process cannot be observed in different views. 10
4
5
TABLE II 2
M EAN E RROR OF THE E STIMATED S IZE 0
2 4 6 8 10 2 4 6 8 10
Test times Test times
Validation Defects Length(mm) Width(mm) Depth(%)
(a) (b)
Simulation 2.0 3.2 2.5
10-fold Real 3.3 4.2 4.7
Fig. 13. Mean errors of 10-fold cross validation for estimating sample defects.
All 2.1 3.3 2.6
(a) Length and width errors. (b) Depth errors.
Simulation 3.0 3.6 2.8
5-fold Real 3.8 4.7 4.9
All 3.1 3.8 2.9 The next comparison experiment on account of the real
defect has been done to test whether VT-CNN can be better
applied to the actual industrial systems. 300 samples of

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100
real defects are selected randomly as test samples, and the TS3
remaining 29700 samples are used as training samples. This 80 TS2

Test numbers
TS1
test has been done for 10 times, and the mean estimation errors 60
of each test are shown in Fig. 14
40

25 20
14 length of VT-CNN depth of VT-CNN
length of CNN 20 depth of CNN 0
12 width of VT-CNN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
width of CNN
Length error(mm)
Error(mm)

10

Error(%)
15
8
10 (a)
6
5
4
60 TS3
2 0 TS2

Test numbers
2 4 6 8 10 2 4 6 8 10 TS1
Test times Test times 40
(a) (b)
20
Fig. 14. Mean error of each test for estimating real defects. (a) Length and
width errors. (b) Depth errors.
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
In Fig. 13 and 14 the estimation errors of VT-CNN is lower Width error(mm)
than the typical CNN, especially the estimation error of depth. (b)
In industrial applications, the accuracy of depth is the most 100
important. Therefore, the proposed VT-CNN is more suitable 80
TS3
TS2
for solving industrial complex problems.
Test numbers 60
TS1

B. Comparison of different sample sets 40

In order to illustrate that the sample set produced in this 20

paper can effectively improve the estimated accuracy in indus-
trial application, a few comparison tests about different sample
sets have been done. First, VT-CNN is chosen as the estimated
network. Then 300 defects are selected randomly from 1000
real defects in industry pipeline to test the accuracy of the
network trained by different training sets. Finally, VT-CNN
is trained by 3 different training sets and estimate these 300
defects. The 3 training sets are described as follows. Training
set 1 (TS1): Generate a training set of 30000 samples by
copying the remaining 700 real defect samples. The copied
samples are made by adding different white Gaussian noise
with the signal-noise ratio (SNR) from 1dB to 5dB to original
samples. Training set 2 (TS2): All simulation samples are used
as training set. Training set 3 (TS3): The training set consist
of all simulation samples and the remaining 700 real defect
samples.
The statistical results of experimental errors are drawn into
histograms as shown in Fig. 15. From these figures, the selec-
tion of training samples has a great impact on the test results.
The training set copied from some real defect samples has low
variety of defect, and it is difficult to train a high accuracy
network by deep learning method. In addition, the test results
of TS2 also have great errors, because of the differentiation of
samples. The complexity of the detection environment and the
uncertainty of the physical parameters lead to the difference
of simulation model and actual physical model. Therefore, the
simulation information and the measured information for the
same defect are different. The deep learning network, which
is trained only through simulation information without any
measured information, can’t estimate accurate size of defect
in industrial pipelines. The training set composed of simulation
samples and experiment samples can enrich the variety of
0
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
Depth error(%)
(c)
Fig. 15. Histograms of statistical results of experimental errors. (a) Defect
length error. (b) Defect width error. (a) Defect depth error.
defect and make the deep network learning the differentiation
of samples, so the test results of the deep network trained
by TS3 have the highest accuracy. The third training set
can ensure that the proposed VT-CNN can be better used in
industrial applications.
C. Comparison of different method
To further prove that the proposed method is more effec-
tive than traditional methods in industrial applications, some
comparative experiments between different methods have been
done in this paper. The test objects are 300 samples randomly
selected from 1000 real defects in industry pipeline. There are
five methods to estimate the size of defects, as shown in Table.
III, IV, and V.
Method A is the method proposed in this paper, and the
training set of Method A consists of 29000 simulation samples
and the remaining 700 real defect samples. Method B, C, D
and E are all combined with feature extraction and machine
learning. Firstly, the feature information of training samples
is obtained by statistical analysis which is one of feature
extraction algorithms in [34], [35]. Then, the mapping relation
between feature information and defect size is established by
intelligent algorithm using machine learning. The intelligent
algorithm of Method B is support vector machine (SVM)

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10

[36]. The kernel function of SVM is radial basis function operators forum (POF) [38], the error in confidence level of
(RBF), and the grid search algorithm is chosen to obtain 80% can be considered as the error reference of a method.
the optimal solution of SVM parameters. The training set The following conclusions can be given from these tables.
of Method B is the remaining 700 real defect samples. The (1) For traditional methods, the number of training sample
intelligent algorithm of Method C is back-propagation neural affects the estimated accuracy of defect. By adding some
network (BPNN) [37]. It consists of three layers of neural simulation samples to the original experimental samples, the
networks, and the number of neurons in the hidden layer is estimated results can be significantly improved. (2) Compared
6. The transfer function of the hidden layer is tan-sigmoid with other methods, the method proposed in this paper can
function, and the learning strategy is Levenberg-Marquardt. reduce the error in estimating the length, width and depth
The training set of Method C is the remaining 700 real defect of defects. (3) The VT-CNN has high accuracy in solving
samples. The intelligent algorithm of Method D is the same estimated problem of defect depth, and can greatly satisfy
SVM with method B. The training set of Method D consists of the industrial demands, even if the measurements have some
29000 simulation samples and the remaining 700 real defect uncertainties and noises.
samples. The intelligent algorithm of Method E is the same
BPNN with method C. The training set of Method E consists D. Discussion about estimation problem of defects
of 29000 simulation samples and the remaining 700 real defect
In the industrial pipeline, most of large defects (larger than
samples.
40mm*40mm) can be split into a number of small defects
TABLE III (smaller than 40mm*40mm) [39], and these large defects can
E STIMATION E RRORS OF D EFECT L ENGTH BY D IFFERENT M ETHODS be called defect clusters. Each small defect can be calculated
Confidence Method separately by the proposed method, and then the large defect
Level A B C D E clusters can be combined with these small defects, according
100% (mm) 5.9 9.2 10.2 8.6 8.5 to the calculation rules of defect clusters in POF.
90% (mm) 5.2 8.0 9.0 7.7 7.5 Changing the following parameters can solve the estimation
80% (mm) 4.6 7.7 8.4 6.3 6.9 problem of large defects, which are hard to be split into small
70% (mm) 4.0 6.6 7.4 6.0 6.4
60% (mm) 3.6 5.6 6.7 5.2 5.8 defects. 1) Increase the size of the input image; 2) Adjust the
50% (mm) 3.4 5.4 6.1 4.9 5.1 VT-CNN parameters to adapt to the input image; 3) Modify
the simulation parameters W and L, and regenerate simulation
samples of large defect size.
From the simulation results as shown in Table. VI (for
TABLE IV
E STIMATION E RRORS OF D EFECT W IDTH BY D IFFERENT M ETHODS defects within 60mm*60mm and 100mm*100mm), the VT-
CNN can still get high accuracy in handling the estimation
Confidence Method
Level A B C D E
problem of large defects. The specific parameters of VT-CNN
are listed in Table VII.
100% (mm) 7.8 11.7 12.6 10.7 11.3
90% (mm) 6.6 11.1 11.7 8.7 9.2 TABLE VI
80% (mm) 5.9 9.4 9.4 8.1 8.4 E STIMATION E RRORS OF L ARGE D EFECTS
70% (mm) 5.2 8.7 9.0 7.7 8.1
60% (mm) 4.9 8.0 8.2 7.3 7.5 Confidence 60mm*60mm 100mm*100mm
50% (mm) 4.3 7.7 7.9 6.4 6.9 Level L-mm W-mm D-% L-mm W-mm D-%
100% 7.1 8.7 8.0 7.9 9.4 8.1
80% 5.8 7.4 7.1 6.1 7.7 6.8
60% 4.1 5.8 5.0 4.5 6.0 4.9
TABLE V
E STIMATION E RRORS OF D EFECT D EPTH BY D IFFERENT M ETHODS

Confidence Method
Level A B C D E TABLE VII
PARAMETERS OF VT-CNN FOR DEFECTS OF 60 MM *60 MM AND
100% (%) 8.6 22.7 23.2 18.7 17.5 100 MM *100 MM
90% (%) 7.7 17.6 18.4 15.4 15.0
80% (%) 7.2 14.0 15.5 10.8 11.1 60mm*60mm 100mm*100mm
70% (%) 6.4 13.1 12.9 9.6 10.1 Parameters Value Parameters Value
60% (%) 5.6 11.6 12.0 9.0 9.5 Input 1@50×50 Input 1@70×70
50% (%) 4.6 10.8 11.5 7.6 8.2 V1 1@42×42 V1 1@60×60
dc2 , dc4 6, 12 dc2 , dc4 6, 12
kc2 , kc4 7, 7 kc2 , kc4 7, 7
The estimation errors of defect size are listed in Table. III, p3 , p5 2, 2 p3 , p 5 3, 3
IV and V, according to the different confidence level. The error
result in confidence level of 100% is the maximum error of all
the results. The error result in confidence level of 60% is the
maximum error of the remaining results after removing 40% VII. C ONCLUSION
largest errors. According to specifications and requirements The method proposed in this paper effectively solves the
for intelligent pig inspection of pipelines written by pipeline estimation problem of defect size in the field of information

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2018.2828811, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
theory. A new framework (VT-CNN) has been presented for
estimating defect size in industrial pipeline. Benefit from the
visual transforming operation turned raw MFL measurements
into 3D image in visual transformation layer (V1), the VT-
CNN not only keeps the advantages of CNN, but also solves
the inapplicability of CNN for MFL information. In addition,
a novel mesher magnetic dipole model for generating training
samples is proposed in this paper. On the basis of a certain
amount of measured samples, adding some simulation samples
can satisfy the training requirements of the deep learning
network, and increase the robustness of the network. Through
the comparison experiment, it can improve the estimated
accuracy of length of 26.9%, width of 27.1% and depth of
33.3% at least. By using this method to estimate the defect
size from MFL information in axial component, the estimation
error can be reduced to length of 4.6mm, width of 5.9mm and
depth of 7.2%.
The limitations of two aspects need to be considered before
using the method proposed in this paper. (1) The length and
width of the defect that need to be detected cannot exceed
the range of length and width of the maximum defect in the
training sample. (2) The spatial distribution information of
magnetic flux leakage needs to be extracted accurately.
In general, the magnetic field information has radial and
circumferential component, in addition to the axial component.
How to use the three component information together to fur-
ther improve the estimated accuracy of defect is the direction
of future research.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by National Key R&D Program of
China (2017YFF0108800) and National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (61673093, 61473069, 61627809, 61433004
and 61703087).
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Senxiang Lu was born in Shenyang, China, in 1988.
He graduated from Northeastern University and got
a masters degree in 2013. He is currently working to-
wards the Ph.D. degree at the School of Information
Science and Engineering, Northeastern University.
His research interests include nondestructive testing
and its applications.
Jian Feng received the B.S. degree, the M.S. degree
and the Ph.D. degree in control theory and control
engineering from Northeastern University, Shenyang
City, China, in 1993, 1996 and 2005, respectively.
He is a professor, doctoral supervisor and vice head
of the Electric Automation Institute, Northeastern
University. His main research interests are fault
diagnosis, signal processing, neural networks and
their industrial applications. He has authored and
coauthored over 120 journal and conference papers,
three monographs and co-invented 80 patents. Prof.
Feng was awarded the “New Century Excellent Talents in University” in 2008.
1551-3203 (c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
12
Huaguang Zhang (M’03, SM’04, F’14) received
the B.S. degree and the M.S. degree in control engi-
neering from Northeast Dianli University of China,
Jilin City, China, in 1982 and 1985, respectively.
He received the Ph.D. degree in thermal power en-
gineering and automation from Southeast University,
Nanjing, China, in 1991.
He joined the Department of Automatic Control,
Northeastern University, Shenyang, China, in 1992,
as a Postdoctoral Fellow for two years. Since 1994,
he has been a Professor and Head of the Institute
of Electric Automation, School of Information Science and Engineering,
Northeastern University, Shenyang, China. His main research interests are
fuzzy control, stochastic system control, neural networks based control,
nonlinear control, and their applications. He has authored and coauthored
over 280 journal and conference papers, six monographs and co-invented 90
patents.
Dr. Zhang is the fellow of IEEE, the E-letter Chair of IEEE CIS Society,
the former Chair of the Adaptive Dynamic Programming & Reinforcement
Learning Technical Committee on IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.
He is an Associate Editor of AUTOMATICA , IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
NEURAL NETWORKS, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CYBERNETICS, and
NEUROCOMPUTING, respectively. He was an Associate Editor of IEEE
TRANSACTIONS ON FUZZY SYSTEMS (2008-2013). He was awarded
the Outstanding Youth Science Foundation Award from the National Natural
Science Foundation Committee of China in 2003. He was named the Cheung
Kong Scholar by the Education Ministry of China in 2005. He is a recipient of
the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks 2012 Outstanding Paper Award.
Jinhai Liu received the B.S. degree in automation
from the Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin,
China, in 2002, the M.S. degree in power elec-
tronics and power transmission, and the Ph.D. de-
gree in control theory and control engineering from
Northeastern University, Shenyang, China, in 2005
and 2009, respectively. He is currently an associate
professor and doctoral supervisor with Northeastern
University. His current research interests include
data driven, fault diagnosis, neural networks, and
safety technology of long pipelines.
Zhenning Wu received the B.S. degree from Dalian
University of Technology, Dalian, China, in 2007,
and the M.S. degree and the Ph.D. degree in control
theory and control engineering from Northeastern
University, Shenyang, China, in 2009 and 2015,
respectively. He has been in charge of National
Science Foundation for Young Scientists of China.
His current research interests include machine learn-
ing, data driven fault diagnosis, industrial big data
analysis, and safety technology of long pipelines.