SMPISD-MTPNet: Scene Semantic Prior-Assisted Infrared Ship Detection Using Multi-Task Perception Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces SMPISD-MTPNet, a novel multi-task perception network that leverages scene semantic priors and a new dataset to improve infrared ship detection accuracy in complex scenes.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new multi-task perception network with scene semantic extraction and a novel dataset for infrared ship detection, outperforming existing methods.

Findings

Outperforms state-of-the-art methods in infrared ship detection.

Effectively detects small and dim targets in complex scenes.

Introduces the IRSDSS dataset with scene segmentation annotations.

Abstract

Infrared ship detection (IRSD) has received increasing attention in recent years due to the robustness of infrared images to adverse weather. However, a large number of false alarms may occur in complex scenes. To address these challenges, we propose the Scene Semantic Prior-Assisted Multi-Task Perception Network (SMPISD-MTPNet), which includes three stages: scene semantic extraction, deep feature extraction, and prediction. In the scene semantic extraction stage, we employ a Scene Semantic Extractor (SSE) to guide the network by the features extracted based on expert knowledge. In the deep feature extraction stage, a backbone network is employed to extract deep features. These features are subsequently integrated by a fusion network, enhancing the detection capabilities across targets of varying sizes. In the prediction stage, we utilize the Multi-Task Perception Module, which includes the Gradient-based Module and the Scene Segmentation Module, enabling precise detection of small and dim targets within complex scenes. For the training process, we introduce the Soft Fine-tuning training strategy to suppress the distortion caused by data augmentation. Besides, due to the lack of a publicly available dataset labelled for scenes, we introduce the Infrared Ship Dataset with Scene Segmentation (IRSDSS). Finally, we evaluate the network and compare it with state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods, indicating that SMPISD-MTPNet outperforms existing approaches. The source code and dataset for this research can be accessed at https://github.com/greekinRoma/KMNDNet.