RTAS-Net: A ResNet-transformer-ASPP semantic segmentation network for remote sensing images

Semantic segmentation of remote sensing images faces pronounced scale variation and complex class-wise spatial distributions, which often lead to semantic discontinuity in large regions and the loss of fine details for small objects. To address these issues, this paper proposes a U-Net-based remote sensing semantic segmentation network termed RTAS-Net (ResNet-Transformer-ASPP Segmentation Network), which enhances feature representation through a collaborative design of multi-scale context aggregation, fine-scale reinforcement, and local-to-global modeling. At the high-semantic level, the network incorporates ASPP to aggregate multi-scale contextual information and enlarge the effective receptive field, while integrating the window-based self-attention mechanism of Swin Transformer to model cross-region dependencies, thereby improving semantic consistency over large-scale areas. At high-resolution skip connections, a lightweight mini-ASPP is embedded to reinforce and pre-fuse fine-scale neighborhood information, and MobileViT is introduced to strengthen local texture and fine-grained structural representations, thus enhancing the recognition and boundary delineation of small objects. Rather than a simple stacking of modules, RTAS-Net achieves unified modeling of global semantics and local details through coordinated cross-level pathways. Experimental results on the ISPRS Potsdam, Vaihingen and LoveDA datasets demonstrate that the proposed method achieves consistent improvements in mIoU, mF1, and OA, and further provides a comprehensive analysis of parameter scale and inference efficiency, validating its effectiveness and practical applicability.

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Publication Details

Journal
PLoS ONE
Published
2026-04-02
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0343729
Primary Topic
Remote-Sensing Image Classification
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

RTAS-Net: A ResNet-transformer-ASPP semantic segmentation network for remote sensing images

Kejia Ma, Ziheng Wang
PLoS ONE
Remote-Sensing Image Classification
article

RTAS-Net: A ResNet-transformer-ASPP semantic segmentation network for remote sensing images

Kejia Ma, Ziheng Wang
article en

Abstract

Semantic segmentation of remote sensing images faces pronounced scale variation and complex class-wise spatial distributions, which often lead to semantic discontinuity in large regions and the loss of fine details for small objects. To address these issues, this paper proposes a U-Net-based remote sensing semantic segmentation network termed RTAS-Net (ResNet-Transformer-ASPP Segmentation Network), which enhances feature representation through a collaborative design of multi-scale context aggregation, fine-scale reinforcement, and local-to-global modeling. At the high-semantic level, the network incorporates ASPP to aggregate multi-scale contextual information and enlarge the effective receptive field, while integrating the window-based self-attention mechanism of Swin Transformer to model cross-region dependencies, thereby improving semantic consistency over large-scale areas. At high-resolution skip connections, a lightweight mini-ASPP is embedded to reinforce and pre-fuse fine-scale neighborhood information, and MobileViT is introduced to strengthen local texture and fine-grained structural representations, thus enhancing the recognition and boundary delineation of small objects. Rather than a simple stacking of modules, RTAS-Net achieves unified modeling of global semantics and local details through coordinated cross-level pathways. Experimental results on the ISPRS Potsdam, Vaihingen and LoveDA datasets demonstrate that the proposed method achieves consistent improvements in mIoU, mF1, and OA, and further provides a comprehensive analysis of parameter scale and inference efficiency, validating its effectiveness and practical applicability.

PLoS ONEVol. 21(4)
Changchun University of Science and Technology (CN)
Jilin Scientific and Technological Development Program
Openalex Percentile: Top 23%
Remote-Sensing Image Classification
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