Research on the identification method of cable insulation defects based on Markov transition fields and transformer networks

Identifying cable insulation defects is crucial for preventing system failures and ensuring the reliability of electrical infrastructure. This paper introduces a novel method leveraging the Markov transition field (MTF) and Transformer network to improve the precision of cable insulation defect identification and enhance the algorithm's noise resistance. Firstly, the algorithm performs modal transformation on the time series data acquired by the ultrasonic probe through MTF, generating corresponding images. Following this, the image data are input into a pre-trained Transformer network to achieve automated feature extraction. Subsequently, a multi-head attention mechanism is introduced, which assigns weights to the features extracted by the Transformer network, thereby emphasizing the most critical information for the identification task. Finally, more accurate defect identification is achieved based on the weighted features. The results demonstrate that this method achieves higher accuracy and stronger noise resistance compared to traditional image processing and recognition methods, making it a robust solution for cable insulation defect identification.