Computer vision approach for phase identification from steel microstructure

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop an automated phase segmentation model from complex microstructure. The mechanical and physical properties of metals and alloys are influenced by their microstructure, and therefore the investigation of microstructure is essential. Coexistence of random or sometimes patterned distribution of different microstructural features such as phase, grains and defects makes microstructure highly complex, and accordingly identification or recognition of individual phase, grains and defects within a microstructure is difficult.Design/methodology/approachIn this perspective, computer vision and image processing techniques are effective to help in understanding and proper interpretation of microscopic image. Microstructure-based image processing mainly focuses on image segmentation, boundary detection and grain size approximation. In this paper, a new approach is presented for automated phase segmentation from 2D microstructure images. The benefit of the proposed work is to identify dominated phase from complex microstructure images. The proposed model is trained and tested with 373 different ultra-high carbon steel (UHCS) microscopic images.FindingsIn this paper, Sobel and Watershed transformation algorithms are used for identification of dominating phases, and deep learning model has been used for identification of phase class from microstructural images.Originality/valueFor the first time, the authors have implemented edge detection followed by watershed segmentation and deep learning (convolutional neural network) to identify phases of UHCS microstructure.