M. Ali, M. A. Gennert, T. G. Clarkson. Analysis, generation and compression of pavement distress images using fractals. In The Applications of Fractals and Chaos, A. J. Crilly, R. A. Earnshaw, H. Jones (eds.), pp. 147-169, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1993.
The vast amount of data generated by automated surface distress evaluation equipment far exceeds the storage capabilities of current digital data storage systems. A study using fractals is being carried out to alleviate the data storage problem, since fractal image compression offers the largest compression ratio of the available image compression algorithms. This paper discusses the use of fractals to analyse, compress and generate pavement distress features, i.e., cracks in the road surface. Much of the following is abridged from a paper by LeBlanc [LeBl91]. A method for calculating the fractal dimension of cracks is presented and values for pavement cracks reported. Several methods for fractal image compression are explained, especially the midpoint displacement algorithm to generate pavement distress images and iterated function system codes. The use of fractal techniques to generate standard images for testing an automated surface distress evaluation system is proposed.
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@InCollection{AlGeCl93,
Author = {Ali, M. and Gennert, M. A. and Clarkson, T. G.},
Title = {Analysis, generation and compression of pavement distress images using fractals},
BookTitle = {The Applications of Fractals and Chaos},
editor = {Crilly, A. J. and Earnshaw, R. A. and Jones, H.},
Pages = {147--169},
Publisher = {Springer-Verlag},
Address = {Berlin},
Year = {1993}
}