Journal of Cognitive Human-Computer Interaction JCHCI 2771-1463 2771-1471 10.54216/JCHCI https://www.americaspg.com/journals/show/2877 2021 2021 Intelligent Fusion Framework for Predicting Defect Type and Localization in Steel Manufacturing Processes Decision support department, Faculty of Computers and Informatics, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44519, Sharqiyah, Egypt. Mahmoud Mahmoud Decision support department, Faculty of Computers and Informatics, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44519, Sharqiyah, Egypt. Mahmoud M M.Ibrahim Decision support department, Faculty of Computers and Informatics, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44519, Sharqiyah, Egypt Heba R. Abdelhady The defect prediction in the manufacturing of steel is a critical challenge because it affects the quality and safety of the products. For this reason, intelligent image fusion approach is introduced in this research to enhance accurate prediction of defect types and locations in steel materials. By utilizing U-Net architecture and pretrained ResNet18 encoder layers, our method performs fusion of data from several imaging modalities thus supporting precise localization as well as classification of defects. In our model’s learning curves as well as comparing predicted segmentation masks with ground truth images, extensive experimentation and visualization show that our model captures subtle defects very well. By so doing, it exhibits robust performance that mitigates risks associated with overfitting since it can accurately identify any flaw while still having the ability to accept unseen data from other sources. These results suggest that our approach can highly contribute to improving quality control and safety standards for steel production. 2024 2024 08 15 10.54216/JCHCI.080201 https://www.americaspg.com/articleinfo/25/show/2877