Multi-Scale Lightweight Neural Network for Steel Surface Defect Detection

Defect classification is an important aspect of steel surface defect detection. Traditional approaches for steel surface defect classification employ convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to improve accuracy, typically by increasing network depth and parameter count. However, this approach overlooks the significant memory overhead of large models, and the incremental gains in accuracy diminish as the number of parameters increases. To address these issues, a multi-scale lightweight neural network model (MM) is proposed. The MM model, with a fusion encoding module as its core, constructs a multi-scale neural network by utilizing the Gaussian difference pyramid. This approach enhances the network’s ability to capture patterns at different resolutions while achieving superior model accuracy and efficiency. Experimental results on a dataset from a hot-rolled strip steel plant demonstrate that the MM network achieves a classification accuracy of 98.06% in defect classification tasks. Compared to networks such as ResNet-50, ResNet-101, VGG, AlexNet, MobileNetV2, and MobileNetV3, the MM model not only reduces the number of model parameters and compresses model size but also achieves better classification accuracy.