<b>Inspection Method of Track Facilities Using Image Analysis of Images Taken from Front of Trains</b>

Appropriate maintenance of tracks is vital for the safe operation railways. Properly managing track facilities necessary to prevent buckling rails. Changes in society are creating a shortage workers, decrease skilled engineers, passenger income, and an increase need develop lowcost inspection methods which do not require experience. Therefore, we have developed method using only inexpensive camcorders, can extract information from images detect joint gaps, wooden sleeper deterioration ballast shape, estimate kilometer point these locate installations question. This paper describes outline its application results.