Data Augmentation and Resolution Enhancement using GANs and Diffusion Models for Tree Segmentation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel pipeline combining GANs and diffusion models for enhancing low-resolution aerial images to improve tree segmentation accuracy, especially in data-scarce scenarios, by generating synthetic training data and unifying image scales.

Contribution

The work presents a new integrated approach using domain adaptation with GANs and diffusion models to enhance low-resolution images for tree segmentation without extensive manual annotations.

Findings

Over 50% improvement in IoU for low-resolution images

Effective generation of realistic synthetic samples

Enhanced robustness across different imaging conditions

Abstract

Urban forests play a key role in enhancing environmental quality and supporting biodiversity in cities. Mapping and monitoring these green spaces are crucial for urban planning and conservation, yet accurately detecting trees is challenging due to complex landscapes and the variability in image resolution caused by different satellite sensors or UAV flight altitudes. While deep learning architectures have shown promise in addressing these challenges, their effectiveness remains strongly dependent on the availability of large and manually labeled datasets, which are often expensive and difficult to obtain in sufficient quantity. In this work, we propose a novel pipeline that integrates domain adaptation with GANs and Diffusion models to enhance the quality of low-resolution aerial images. Our proposed pipeline enhances low-resolution imagery while preserving semantic content, enabling effective tree segmentation without requiring large volumes of manually annotated data. Leveraging models such as pix2pix, Real-ESRGAN, Latent Diffusion, and Stable Diffusion, we generate realistic and structurally consistent synthetic samples that expand the training dataset and unify scale across domains. This approach not only improves the robustness of segmentation models across different acquisition conditions but also provides a scalable and replicable solution for remote sensing scenarios with scarce annotation resources. Experimental results demonstrated an improvement of over 50% in IoU for low-resolution images, highlighting the effectiveness of our method compared to traditional pipelines.