Deep Learning for Magnetic Flux Leakage Detection and Evaluation of Oil & Gas Pipelines: A Review

Magnetic flux leakage testing (MFL) is the most widely used nondestructive testing technology in the safety inspection of oil and gas pipelines. The analysis of MFL test data is essential for pipeline safety assessments. In recent years, deep-learning technologies have been applied gradually to the data analysis of pipeline MFL testing, and remarkable results have been achieved. To the best of our knowledge, this review is a pioneering effort on comprehensively summarizing deep learning for MFL detection and evaluation of oil and gas pipelines. The majority of the publications surveyed are from the last five years. In this work, the applications of deep learning for pipeline MFL inspection are reviewed in detail from three aspects: pipeline anomaly recognition, defect quantification, and MFL data augmentation. The traditional analysis method is compared with the deep-learning method. Moreover, several open research challenges and future directions are discussed. To better apply deep learning to MFL testing and data analysis of oil and gas pipelines, it is noted that suitable interpretable deep-learning models and data-augmentation methods are important directions for future research.