Three-dimensional radial magnetic flux leakage information around wire rope surface is acquired by Hall sensor array annularly distributed around the rope.An adaptive spatial notch filter is designed to eliminate the strand-waveform noise.Then the filtered signal is normalized and transformed to a gray-scale map.An image recognition algorithm is introduced to extract features from the gray-scale map and distinguish among several typical localized flaws.The results show the method can identify the degree and width of a defect

distinguish the circumferential distribution of defects

e.g.concentrated or dispersive breaks.