Paving the Way toward an Open-Source Concrete Analysis Program

Michigan Technological University has previously developed an automated technique for analyzing the air voids in hardened concrete. With this approach, a common office scanner captures images of a polished concrete slab for computer analysis. The existing analysis software, however, centers on an expensive, and unwieldy, commercial product.

We aim to produce an open-source image analysis solution using ImageJ—an open-source image processing and analysis tool maintained by the National Institutes of Health. It currently serves as the foundation for a number of exceptional image-analysis tools used in academia and industry.

The project will also establish a presence on appropedia.org, a collaborative site for sustainability matters, in order to foster open communication and to easily reach the largest audience possible.

Developing an open-source solution will reach the largest audience possible, and will open the code to the largest number of contributors as only basic programming skills are needed to modify the code. This open-source code will duplicate the functionality of the existing package, allowing users to:

• set white balance;
• analyze a selected area of the image using one of four analysis methods;
• display interfaces for gathering necessary information;
• calibrate analysis settings; and
• write reports of analysis and optimization.

The commercial software package on which the current program runs sells for around $500—too steep a price for transportation agencies operating on a tight budget. A few interested parties contributing only a fraction of that cost to this project yields a code base that is forever free, and that has the potential for rapid evolution as more people use, modify, and improve it.