Metal surface defect detection using SLF-YOLO enhanced YOLOv8 model

Abstract This paper addresses the industrial demand for precision and efficiency in metal surface defect detection by proposing SLF-YOLO, a lightweight object detection model designed for resource-constrained environments. The key innovations of SLF-YOLO include a novel SC_C2f module with a channel...

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Main Authors: Yuan Liu, Yilong Liu, Xiaoyan Guo, Xi Ling, Qingyi Geng
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2025-04-01
Series:Scientific Reports
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-94936-9
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author Yuan Liu
Yilong Liu
Xiaoyan Guo
Xi Ling
Qingyi Geng
author_facet Yuan Liu
Yilong Liu
Xiaoyan Guo
Xi Ling
Qingyi Geng
author_sort Yuan Liu
collection DOAJ
description Abstract This paper addresses the industrial demand for precision and efficiency in metal surface defect detection by proposing SLF-YOLO, a lightweight object detection model designed for resource-constrained environments. The key innovations of SLF-YOLO include a novel SC_C2f module with a channel gating mechanism to enhance feature representation and regulate information flow, and a newly designed Light-SSF_Neck structure to improve multi-scale feature fusion and morphological feature extraction. Additionally, an improved FIMetal-IoU loss function is introduced to boost generalization performance, particularly for fine-grained and small-target defects. Experimental results demonstrate that SLF-YOLO achieves a mean Average Precision (mAP) of 80.0% on the NEU-DET dataset, outperforming YOLOv8’s 75.9%. On the AL10-DET dataset, SLF-YOLO achieves a mAP of 86.8%, striking an effective balance between detection accuracy and computational efficiency without increasing model complexity. Compared to other mainstream models, SLF-YOLO demonstrates strong detection accuracy while maintaining a lightweight architecture, making it highly suitable for industrial applications in metal surface defect detection. The source code is available at https://github.com/zacianfans/SLF-YOLO .
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issn 2045-2322
language English
publishDate 2025-04-01
publisher Nature Portfolio
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spelling doaj-art-48ae106abb8d447495b76718c29d5f8a2025-08-20T03:07:41ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222025-04-0115112010.1038/s41598-025-94936-9Metal surface defect detection using SLF-YOLO enhanced YOLOv8 modelYuan Liu0Yilong Liu1Xiaoyan Guo2Xi Ling3Qingyi Geng4School of Mathematics, Northwest UniversitySchool of Mathematics, Northwest UniversitySchool of Mathematics, Northwest UniversitySchool of Mathematics, Northwest UniversitySchool of Mathematics, Northwest UniversityAbstract This paper addresses the industrial demand for precision and efficiency in metal surface defect detection by proposing SLF-YOLO, a lightweight object detection model designed for resource-constrained environments. The key innovations of SLF-YOLO include a novel SC_C2f module with a channel gating mechanism to enhance feature representation and regulate information flow, and a newly designed Light-SSF_Neck structure to improve multi-scale feature fusion and morphological feature extraction. Additionally, an improved FIMetal-IoU loss function is introduced to boost generalization performance, particularly for fine-grained and small-target defects. Experimental results demonstrate that SLF-YOLO achieves a mean Average Precision (mAP) of 80.0% on the NEU-DET dataset, outperforming YOLOv8’s 75.9%. On the AL10-DET dataset, SLF-YOLO achieves a mAP of 86.8%, striking an effective balance between detection accuracy and computational efficiency without increasing model complexity. Compared to other mainstream models, SLF-YOLO demonstrates strong detection accuracy while maintaining a lightweight architecture, making it highly suitable for industrial applications in metal surface defect detection. The source code is available at https://github.com/zacianfans/SLF-YOLO .https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-94936-9Surface defect detectionYOLOv8Lightweight modelMulti-scale fusionOptimized loss function
spellingShingle Yuan Liu
Yilong Liu
Xiaoyan Guo
Xi Ling
Qingyi Geng
Metal surface defect detection using SLF-YOLO enhanced YOLOv8 model
Scientific Reports
Surface defect detection
YOLOv8
Lightweight model
Multi-scale fusion
Optimized loss function
title Metal surface defect detection using SLF-YOLO enhanced YOLOv8 model
title_full Metal surface defect detection using SLF-YOLO enhanced YOLOv8 model
title_fullStr Metal surface defect detection using SLF-YOLO enhanced YOLOv8 model
title_full_unstemmed Metal surface defect detection using SLF-YOLO enhanced YOLOv8 model
title_short Metal surface defect detection using SLF-YOLO enhanced YOLOv8 model
title_sort metal surface defect detection using slf yolo enhanced yolov8 model
topic Surface defect detection
YOLOv8
Lightweight model
Multi-scale fusion
Optimized loss function
url https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-94936-9
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AT yilongliu metalsurfacedefectdetectionusingslfyoloenhancedyolov8model
AT xiaoyanguo metalsurfacedefectdetectionusingslfyoloenhancedyolov8model
AT xiling metalsurfacedefectdetectionusingslfyoloenhancedyolov8model
AT qingyigeng metalsurfacedefectdetectionusingslfyoloenhancedyolov8model