# Computer Vision for Road Imaging and Pothole Detection: A State-of-the-Art Review of Systems and Algorithms

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.13590 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13590/

## Key facts

- Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 37 of its 135 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Apr 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00567/) (2015)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [Encoder-Decoder with Atrous Separable Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02611/) (2018)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02767/) (2018)
- [Identity Mappings in Deep Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.05027/) (2016)
- [Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections on Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07261/) (2016)
- [SegNet: A Deep Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architecture for Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.00561/) (2015)
- [YOLO9000: Better, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.08242/) (2016)
- [SqueezeNet: AlexNet-level accuracy with 50x fewer parameters and <0.5MB model size](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07360/) (2016)
- [SNE-RoadSeg: Incorporating Surface Normal Information into Semantic Segmentation for Accurate Freespace Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.11351/) (2020)
- [Road Damage Detection Using Deep Neural Networks with Images Captured Through a Smartphone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09454/) (2018)
- [Pothole Detection Based on Disparity Transformation and Road Surface Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.00894/) (2019)
- [Road surface 3d reconstruction based on dense subpixel disparity map estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.01874/) (2018)
- [Road Crack Detection Using Deep Convolutional Neural Network and Adaptive Thresholding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08582/) (2019)
- [PVStereo: Pyramid Voting Module for End-to-End Self-Supervised Stereo Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07094/) (2021)
- [Rethinking Road Surface 3D Reconstruction and Pothole Detection: From Perspective Transformation to Disparity Map Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.10802/) (2020)
- [Road Damage Detection Based on Unsupervised Disparity Map Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.04988/) (2019)
- [Dynamic Fusion Module Evolves Drivable Area and Road Anomaly Detection: A Benchmark and Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02433/) (2021)
- [SNE-RoadSeg+: Rethinking Depth-Normal Translation and Deep Supervision for Freespace Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.14599/) (2021)
- [Applying Surface Normal Information in Drivable Area and Road Anomaly Detection for Ground Mobile Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.11383/) (2020)
- [Learning Collision-Free Space Detection from Stereo Images: Homography Matrix Brings Better Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07890/) (2020)
- [Computer Stereo Vision for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03194/) (2020)
- [Graph Attention Layer Evolves Semantic Segmentation for Road Pothole Detection: A Benchmark and Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.02711/) (2021)
- [We Learn Better Road Pothole Detection: from Attention Aggregation to Adversarial Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.06840/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [RoadFormer: Duplex Transformer for RGB-Normal Semantic Road Scene Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10356/) (2023)
- [Online,Target-Free LiDAR-Camera Extrinsic Calibration via Cross-Modal Mask Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18083/) (2024)
- [RSRD: A Road Surface Reconstruction Dataset and Benchmark for Safe and Comfortable Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02262/) (2023)
- [UP-CrackNet: Unsupervised Pixel-Wise Road Crack Detection via Adversarial Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15647/) (2024)
- [These Maps Are Made by Propagation: Adapting Deep Stereo Networks to Road Scenarios with Decisive Disparity Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.03717/) (2024)
- [UDTIRI: An Online Open-Source Intelligent Road Inspection Benchmark Suite](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08842/) (2023)
- [V-RoAst: Visual Road Assessment. Can VLM be a Road Safety Assessor Using the iRAP Standard?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.10872/) (2024)
- [LuSeg: Efficient Negative and Positive Obstacles Segmentation via Contrast-Driven Multi-Modal Feature Fusion on the Lunar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11409/) (2025)
- [Artifacts of Idiosyncracy in Global Street View Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11046/) (2025)
- [iWatchRoad: Scalable Detection and Geospatial Visualization of Potholes for Smart Cities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10945/) (2025)
- [Unleashing the Capabilities of Large Vision-Language Models for Intelligent Perception of Roadside Infrastructure](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10551/) (2026)
- [Establishing Reality-Virtuality Interconnections in Urban Digital Twins for Superior Intelligent Road Inspection and Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17699/) (2024)
- [Enhancing Pothole Detection and Characterization: Integrated Segmentation and Depth Estimation in Road Anomaly Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13648/) (2025)
- [Intelligent Road Anomaly Detection with Real-time Notification System for Enhanced Road Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08882/) (2025)
- [Robust Video-Based Pothole Detection and Area Estimation for Intelligent Vehicles with Depth Map and Kalman Smoothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21049/) (2025)
- [iWatchRoadv2: Pothole Detection, Geospatial Mapping, and Intelligent Road Governance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.16375/) (2025)
- [WP-CrackNet: A Collaborative Adversarial Learning Framework for End-to-End Weakly-Supervised Road Crack Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.17566/) (2025)
- [WHU-Infra3D: A Full-stack Multi-modal Dataset and Benchmark for 3D Roadside Infrastructure Inventory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09882/) (2026)
- [LOGOS: LiDAR-Only Gaussian Elevation Splatting for Unified Tiny Obstacle Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.21527/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Computer vision algorithms have been prevalently utilized for 3-D road imaging and pothole detection for over two decades. Nonetheless, there is a lack of systematic survey articles on state-of-the-art (SoTA) computer vision techniques, especially deep learning models, developed to tackle these problems. This article first introduces the sensing systems employed for 2-D and 3-D road data acquisition, including camera(s), laser scanners, and Microsoft Kinect. Afterward, it thoroughly and comprehensively reviews the SoTA computer vision algorithms, including (1) classical 2-D image processing, (2) 3-D point cloud modeling and segmentation, and (3) machine/deep learning, developed for road pothole detection. This article also discusses the existing challenges and future development trends of computer vision-based road pothole detection approaches: classical 2-D image processing-based and 3-D point cloud modeling and segmentation-based approaches have already become history; and Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have demonstrated compelling road pothole detection results and are promising to break the bottleneck with the future advances in self/un-supervised learning for multi-modal semantic segmentation. We believe that this survey can serve as practical guidance for developing the next-generation road condition assessment systems.