Seepage monitoring is crucial for the safe operation and maintenance of dams. Traditional dam observation methods suffer from significant random errors and insufficient inspection frequency during flood seasons. To address these limitations, this study proposes an infrared thermography-based unmanned aerial vehicle inspection system for detecting surface seepage on dam bodies. First, an image dataset of seepage-affected areas on the dam surface was collected and established using an infrared camera. Then, an improved Mask Region-based Convolutional Neural Network(Mask R-CNN) framework was employed to extract seepage region data, enabling rapid detection of surface seepage. Subsequently, binary processing was applied to quantify the seepage area. Finally, the proposed method was validated on the downstream face of a hydropower station. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach reduces the inspection cycle by 80% compared to traditional methods while maintaining sufficient accuracy for routine dam monitoring. This study provides a novel technique for seepage detection and quantitative analysis, offering a new solution for dam leakage inspection and seepage-related damage assessment.

dam  /  seepage feature extraction algorithm  /  unmanned aerial vehicle photogrammetry  /  DCNN  /  seepage identification