Fully Convolutional Change Detection Framework with Generative Adversarial Network for Unsupervised, Weakly Supervised and Regional Supervised Change Detection

TL;DR

This paper introduces a versatile fully convolutional change detection framework using generative adversarial networks that unifies unsupervised, weakly supervised, regional supervised, and fully supervised change detection in remote sensing.

Contribution

It proposes a novel end-to-end network integrating various supervision levels into one framework, utilizing a Unet segmentor, generator, and discriminator for comprehensive change detection.

Findings

Effective in unsupervised change detection

Works well for weakly and regional supervised tasks

Demonstrates strong performance in experiments

Abstract

Deep learning for change detection is one of the current hot topics in the field of remote sensing. However, most end-to-end networks are proposed for supervised change detection, and unsupervised change detection models depend on traditional pre-detection methods. Therefore, we proposed a fully convolutional change detection framework with generative adversarial network, to conclude unsupervised, weakly supervised, regional supervised, and fully supervised change detection tasks into one framework. A basic Unet segmentor is used to obtain change detection map, an image-to-image generator is implemented to model the spectral and spatial variation between multi-temporal images, and a discriminator for changed and unchanged is proposed for modeling the semantic changes in weakly and regional supervised change detection task. The iterative optimization of segmentor and generator can build an end-to-end network for unsupervised change detection, the adversarial process between segmentor and discriminator can provide the solutions for weakly and regional supervised change detection, the segmentor itself can be trained for fully supervised task. The experiments indicate the effectiveness of the propsed framework in unsupervised, weakly supervised and regional supervised change detection. This paper provides theorical definitions for unsupervised, weakly supervised and regional supervised change detection tasks, and shows great potentials in exploring end-to-end network for remote sensing change detection.