ARSOD-YOLO: Enhancing Small Target Detection for Remote Sensing Images

Remote sensing images play a vital role in domains including environmental monitoring, agriculture, and autonomous driving. However, the detection of targets in remote sensing images remains a challenging task. This study introduces innovative methods to enhance feature extraction, feature fusion, and model optimization. The Adaptive Selective Feature Enhancement Module (AFEM) dynamically adjusts feature weights using GhostModule and sigmoid functions, thereby enhancing the accuracy of small target detection. Moreover, the Adaptive Multi-scale Convolution Kernel Feature Fusion Module (AKSFFM) enhances feature fusion through multi-scale convolution operations and attention weight learning mechanisms. Moreover, our proposed ARSOD-YOLO optimized the network architecture, component modules, and loss functions based on YOLOv8, enhancing outstanding small target detection capabilities while preserving model efficiency. We conducted experiments on the VEDAI and AI-TOD datasets, showcasing the excellent performance of ARSOD-YOLO. Our algorithm achieved an mAP50 of 74.3% on the VEDAI dataset, surpassing the YOLOv8 baseline by 3.1%. Similarly, on the AI-TOD dataset, the mAP50 reached 47.8%, exceeding the baseline network by 6.1%.