Moving object detection from multi-depth images with an attention-enhanced CNN

TL;DR

This paper introduces an attention-enhanced multi-input CNN for detecting moving objects in astronomical images, significantly reducing manual verification efforts with high accuracy and robustness.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel multi-input CNN with a convolutional block attention module tailored for moving object detection in wide-field survey data.

Findings

Achieved nearly 99% accuracy and >0.99 AUC on observational data.

Reduced human verification workload by over 99%.

Enhanced detection robustness through attention mechanisms.

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges for detecting moving objects in the solar system from wide-field survey data is determining whether a signal indicates a true object or is due to some other source, like noise. Object verification has relied heavily on human eyes, which usually results in significant labor costs. In order to address this limitation and reduce the reliance on manual intervention, we propose a multi-input convolutional neural network integrated with a convolutional block attention module. This method is specifically tailored to enhance the moving object detection system that we have developed and used previously. The current method introduces two innovations. This first one is a multi-input architecture that processes multiple stacked images simultaneously. The second is the incorporation of the convolutional block attention module which enables the model to focus on essential features in both spatial and channel dimensions. These advancements facilitate efficient learning from multiple inputs, leading to more robust detection of moving objects. The performance of the model is evaluated on a dataset consisting of approximately 2,000 observational images. We achieved an accuracy of nearly 99% with AUC (an Area Under the Curve) of >0.99. These metrics indicate that the proposed model achieves excellent classification performance. By adjusting the threshold for object detection, the new model reduces the human workload by more than 99% compared to manual verification.