HRSRD: A High-Resolution SAR Road Dataset and MSDA-LinkNet for Road Extraction with Multi-Scale Deformable Attention

High-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery is essential for large-scale road extraction, yet it presents significant challenges due to inherent speckle noise, complex scattering effects, and the anisotropic nature of road structures. Moreover, the scarcity of large-scale, high-quality annotated SAR road datasets hinders the development of deep learning-based methods. To address these issues, this paper first constructs a high-resolution SAR road dataset covering representative regions in the western United States. Road annotations are automatically generated using OpenStreetMap (OSM) vectors and then refined via a structure-guided alignment strategy. Building upon this dataset, we propose a novel framework termed Multi-Scale and Deformable-Attention LinkNet (MSDA-LinkNet), specifically designed to capture thin, direction-sensitive, and geometrically complex road features. The architecture integrates a parallel direction-aware multi-scale convolution module to explicitly model road anisotropy and scale variations, complemented by a deformable attention mechanism to adaptively aggregate contextual information along curved and irregular trajectories. Extensive experiments demonstrate that MSDA-LinkNet consistently outperforms representative approaches across key metrics, including Precision, F1-score, and Intersection over Union (IoU). The released dataset and benchmark provide a solid foundation for future research in high-resolution SAR-based road mapping.

Authors

Institutions

Publication Details

Journal
Electronics
Published
2026-03-16
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15061236
Primary Topic
Automated Road and Building Extraction
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
Controls
|||
ALL TIME
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
article

HRSRD: A High-Resolution SAR Road Dataset and MSDA-LinkNet for Road Extraction with Multi-Scale Deformable Attention

M. M., Zhaoguo Deng, Yuan Li, Zhigao Yang et al.
Electronics
Automated Road and Building Extraction
article

HRSRD: A High-Resolution SAR Road Dataset and MSDA-LinkNet for Road Extraction with Multi-Scale Deformable Attention

M. M., Zhaoguo Deng, Yuan Li, Zhigao Yang, Li Zhong, Bo Wang, Chenxi Xu
article en

Abstract

High-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery is essential for large-scale road extraction, yet it presents significant challenges due to inherent speckle noise, complex scattering effects, and the anisotropic nature of road structures. Moreover, the scarcity of large-scale, high-quality annotated SAR road datasets hinders the development of deep learning-based methods. To address these issues, this paper first constructs a high-resolution SAR road dataset covering representative regions in the western United States. Road annotations are automatically generated using OpenStreetMap (OSM) vectors and then refined via a structure-guided alignment strategy. Building upon this dataset, we propose a novel framework termed Multi-Scale and Deformable-Attention LinkNet (MSDA-LinkNet), specifically designed to capture thin, direction-sensitive, and geometrically complex road features. The architecture integrates a parallel direction-aware multi-scale convolution module to explicitly model road anisotropy and scale variations, complemented by a deformable attention mechanism to adaptively aggregate contextual information along curved and irregular trajectories. Extensive experiments demonstrate that MSDA-LinkNet consistently outperforms representative approaches across key metrics, including Precision, F1-score, and Intersection over Union (IoU). The released dataset and benchmark provide a solid foundation for future research in high-resolution SAR-based road mapping.

ElectronicsVol. 15(6)
Anhui University (CN), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Microwave Vision Group (United States) (US), Aerospace Information Research Institute (CN), University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
Sustainable cities and communities
Openalex Percentile: Top 20%
Automated Road and Building Extraction
AI Navigator

Ask Laika to Summarize, Analyze, and Connect papers live on the map.

Summarize Papers & Methodologies

Extract key findings, datasets, and comparative methods across publications.

Benchmark Rankings & Visual Analytics

Rank top research institutions, authors, funders, topics, and journals by Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) and paper volume with instant charts.

Connect Distant Disciplines

Bridge topological clusters on the map to find hidden collaborative intersections.