Improved YOLOv8-based Algorithm for Small-target Bearing Surface Defect Detection

WANG Tianhui; CUI Junjie; ZHAO Heming; LI Yanting; SHI Guoqiang

doi:10.7643/issn.1672-9242.2025.08.018

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Equipment Environmental Engineering ›› 2025, Vol. 22 ›› Issue (8) : 148-157. DOI: 10.7643/issn.1672-9242.2025.08.018

Key Projects Equipment

Improved YOLOv8-based Algorithm for Small-target Bearing Surface Defect Detection

WANG Tianhui¹, CUI Junjie^1,2,*, ZHAO Heming¹, LI Yanting¹, SHI Guoqiang²

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Abstract

The work aims to address the technical challenges of small defect sizes, complex backgrounds, and the accuracy-speed trade-off in bearing surface defect detection. Based on the lightweight detection algorithm improved based on the YOLOv8n framework, the backbone’s C2F structure was replaced with a Group Spatial-Shuffle Convolution (GSConv) module to reduce model complexity and parameters. A parameter-free SimAM attention mechanism was integrated to enhance defect feature localization. An Asymptotic Feature Pyramid Network (AFPN) was applied to optimize multi-scale feature fusion efficiency. The bounding box regression loss was improved to Minimum Point Distance Intersection over Union (MPDIoU) for precise small-target positioning. Experimental results demonstrated a mAP@0.5 of 92.32% at 121.8 FPS on bearing defect datasets. The number of model parameters was 16.25% less than that of the original YOLOv8n. Ablation studies validated the contributions of each module. Compared with the original YOLOv8n model, the improved model achieved a 12.5% accuracy improvement over industrial inspection benchmarks while maintaining real-time performance. The proposed method effectively balances high-precision detection and computational efficiency, meets the requirements for real-time industrial defect inspection, and provides a novel technical solution for small-target defect identification in manufacturing quality control.

Key words

defect detection / YOLOv8 / bearing surface defect detection / attention mechanism / small-target detection / lightweight network

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WANG Tianhui, CUI Junjie, ZHAO Heming, LI Yanting, SHI Guoqiang. Improved YOLOv8-based Algorithm for Small-target Bearing Surface Defect Detection[J]. Equipment Environmental Engineering. 2025, 22(8): 148-157 https://doi.org/10.7643/issn.1672-9242.2025.08.018

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