DGSRef: Decoupled Geometric-Semantic Refinement Network for High-Resolution Remote Sensing Segmentation

High-resolution remote sensing semantic segmentation is essential for land-cover mapping, urban monitoring, and object-level geospatial analysis, but accurate prediction remains difficult because remote sensing images often contain complex backgrounds, shadows, weak object contrast, and complex texture variations. Moreover, spatial details lost during feature downsampling cannot be fully recovered by subsequent decoding. As a result, coarse predictions usually contain two coupled residual problems: spatial boundary displacement and local semantic inconsistency. To address these problems, we propose DGSRef (Decoupled Geometric-Semantic Refinement Network), a lightweight attachable refiner for improving coarse predictions from existing segmentation models. DGSRef treats coarse logits as semantic priors and refines them through two decoupled stages. In the geometric alignment stage, a displacement field is predicted to warp coarse logits in the output space, modeling boundary correction as spatial transport rather than direct reclassification. A Multi-Scale Semantic-Guided Structural Difference (MSGSD) module further provides semantic-guided structural cues for displacement estimation. In the semantic residual stage, gated residual logits are predicted to correct remaining local semantic inconsistencies without globally overwriting the aligned prediction. Experiments on ISPRS Vaihingen, ISPRS Potsdam, and LoveDA show that DGSRef improves diverse segmentation architectures with limited additional computation and parameters, confirming its effectiveness as a lightweight decoupled refinement framework.

Authors

Institutions

Publication Details

Journal
Remote Sensing
Published
2026-09-04
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18173011
Primary Topic
Remote-Sensing Image Classification
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

Funders

Controls
|||
ALL TIME
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
article

DGSRef: Decoupled Geometric-Semantic Refinement Network for High-Resolution Remote Sensing Segmentation

Chaoqun Xia, Shuhan Chen, Junlu Wang, Xiaorun Li
Remote Sensing
Remote-Sensing Image Classification
article

DGSRef: Decoupled Geometric-Semantic Refinement Network for High-Resolution Remote Sensing Segmentation

Chaoqun Xia, Shuhan Chen, Junlu Wang, Xiaorun Li
article en

Abstract

High-resolution remote sensing semantic segmentation is essential for land-cover mapping, urban monitoring, and object-level geospatial analysis, but accurate prediction remains difficult because remote sensing images often contain complex backgrounds, shadows, weak object contrast, and complex texture variations. Moreover, spatial details lost during feature downsampling cannot be fully recovered by subsequent decoding. As a result, coarse predictions usually contain two coupled residual problems: spatial boundary displacement and local semantic inconsistency. To address these problems, we propose DGSRef (Decoupled Geometric-Semantic Refinement Network), a lightweight attachable refiner for improving coarse predictions from existing segmentation models. DGSRef treats coarse logits as semantic priors and refines them through two decoupled stages. In the geometric alignment stage, a displacement field is predicted to warp coarse logits in the output space, modeling boundary correction as spatial transport rather than direct reclassification. A Multi-Scale Semantic-Guided Structural Difference (MSGSD) module further provides semantic-guided structural cues for displacement estimation. In the semantic residual stage, gated residual logits are predicted to correct remaining local semantic inconsistencies without globally overwriting the aligned prediction. Experiments on ISPRS Vaihingen, ISPRS Potsdam, and LoveDA show that DGSRef improves diverse segmentation architectures with limited additional computation and parameters, confirming its effectiveness as a lightweight decoupled refinement framework.

Remote SensingVol. 18(17)
Wenzhou University (CN), Zhejiang University (CN)
National Key Research and Development Program of China
Sustainable cities and communities
Openalex Percentile: Top 13%
Remote-Sensing Image Classification
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.