AbstractThe identification of structural damages takes a more and more important role within the modern economy, where often the monitoring of an infrastructure is the last approach to keep it under public use. Conventional monitoring methods require specialized engineers and are mainly time-consuming. This research paper considers the ability of neural networks to recognize the initial or alteration of structural properties based on the training processes. The presented model, a spatially asymmetric encoder–decoder network, is based on 1D-Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) for wave field pattern recognition, or more specifically the wave field change recognition. The proposed model is used to identify the change within propagating wave fields after a crack initiation within the structure. The paper describes the implemented method and the required training procedure to get a successful crack detection accuracy, where the training data are based on the dynamic lattice model. Although the training of the model is still time-consuming, the proposed new method has an enormous potential to become a new crack detection or structural health monitoring approach within the conventional monitoring methods.