Detection of Termite Nests in Dams Using Ground Penetrating Radar Based on Deep Learning

Termites have always been one of the major hidden dangers to the operational safety of dams. Traditional detection methods such as manual inspection and termite baiting have limitations in terms of efficiency and accuracy. To solve the problems, paper proposes a termite nest detection method based on ground penetrating radar (GPR) and deep learning. First, the simulated GPR data are generated using gprMax software, and the real data are collected using a GPR at several dams. Subsequently, the YOLOv8 deep neural network is employed for termite nest recognition in GPR images. The experimental results show that the proposed model can achieve the mean average precision (mAP) of 0.96 and a detection speed of 53.76 frames per second (FPS).