On-line thermography and ultrasound-excited thermography have been evaluated for the detection of cracks in oak lamellae of flooring top layers. Image acquisition accompanied the tests and the objects were identified by post-processing and the evaluation of lamella images. The results were validated by comparing these findings with the actual state of the lamellae in terms of cracks and the classification accuracy of the method was calculated. The classification accuracy of the ultrasoundexcited thermography method was three times greater than that of on-line thermography. The main conclusion is that the ultrasound-excited thermography method is the more suitable for the detection of cracks and the classification of lamellae.