Height Deviation Detection of Rail Bearing Platform on High-Speed Railway Track Slab Based on Digital Image Correlation

•Propose a camera-total station-prism fusion measurement method based on 3D-DIC to measure the height deviation of the rail bearing platform on high-speed railway track slab; assemble a measuring equipment consisting of dual cameras and reflecting prisms.•Measure the 3D contour of a single rail bearing platform through 3D-DIC, and the accuracy reaches 0.1 mm; sitch the contour of all the bearing platforms through the camera-total station-prism fusion measurement method, and the measurement capacity is increased from 500 m/day to 5000 m/day, which is 10 times more efficient without increasing the measurement error.•Solve the problem of non-uniform coordinate systems in 3D-DIC method and accumulative errors in the point cloud data stitching method based on the overlapping area; provide a novel idea for fully automatic, highly efficient and accurate height deviation measurement of rail bearing platforms on high-speed railway track slabs.