A Real-Time Small Target Vehicle Detection Algorithm with an Improved YOLOv5m Network Model

To address the challenges of high complexity,poor real-time performance,and low detection rates for small target vehicles in existing vehicle object detection algorithms,this paper proposes a real-time lightweight architecture based on You Only Look Once(YOLO)v5m.Firstly,a lightweight upsampling operator called Content-Aware Reassembly of Features(CARAFE)is introduced in the feature fusion layer of the network to maximize the extraction of deep-level features for small target vehicles,reducing the missed detection rate and false detection rate.Secondly,a new prediction layer for tiny targets is added,and the feature fusion network is redesigned to enhance the detection capability for small targets.Finally,this paper applies L1 regularization to train the improved network,followed by pruning and fine-tuning operations to remove redundant channels,reducing computational and parameter complexity and enhancing the detection efficiency of the network.Training is conducted on the VisDrone2019-DET dataset.The experimental results show that the proposed algorithmreduces parameters and computation by 63.8% and 65.8%,respectively.The average detection accuracy improves by 5.15%,and the detection speed reaches 47 images per second,satisfying real-time requirements.Compared with existing approaches,including YOLOv5m and classical vehicle detection algorithms,our method achieves higher accuracy and faster speed for real-time detection of small target vehicles in edge computing.

Ghost-YOLO v8:An Attention-Guided Enhanced Small Target Detection Algorithm for Floating Litter on Water Surfaces

Addressing the challenges in detecting surface floating litter in artificial lakes,including complex environments,uneven illumination,and susceptibility to noise andweather,this paper proposes an efficient and lightweight Ghost-YOLO(You Only Look Once)v8 algorithm.The algorithmintegrates advanced attention mechanisms and a smalltarget detection head to significantly enhance detection performance and efficiency.Firstly,an SE(Squeeze-and-Excitation)mechanism is incorporated into the backbone network to fortify the extraction of resilient features and precise target localization.This mechanism models feature channel dependencies,enabling adaptive adjustment of channel importance,thereby improving recognition of floating litter targets.Secondly,a 160×160 small-target detection layer is designed in the feature fusion neck to mitigate semantic information loss due to varying target scales.This design enhances the fusion of deep and shallow semantic information,improving small target feature representation and enabling better capture and identification of tiny floating litter.Thirdly,to balance performance and efficiency,the GhostConv module replaces part of the conventional convolutions in the feature fusion neck.Additionally,a novel C2fGhost(CSPDarknet53 to 2-Stage Feature Pyramid Networks Ghost)module is introduced to further reduce network parameters.Lastly,to address the challenge of occlusion,a newloss function,WIoU(Wise Intersection over Union)v3 incorporating a flexible and non-monotonic concentration approach,is adopted to improve detection rates for surface floating litter.The outcomes of the experiments demonstrate that the Ghost-YOLO v8 model proposed in this paper performs well in the dataset Marine,significantly enhances precision and recall by 3.3 and 7.6 percentage points,respectively,in contrast with the base model,mAP@0.5 and mAP 0.5:0.95 improve by 5.3 and 4.4 percentage points and reduces the computational volume by 1.88MB,the FPS value hardly decreases,and the efficient real-time identification of floating debris on the water’s surface can be achieved costeffectively.

Improved Weighted Local Contrast Method for Infrared Small Target Detection

In order to address the problem of high false alarm rate and low probabilities of infrared small target detection in complex low-altitude background,an infrared small target detection method based on improved weighted local contrast is proposed in this paper.First,the ratio information between the target and local background is utilized as an enhancement factor.The local contrast is calculated by incorporating the heterogeneity between the target and local background.Then,a local product weighted method is designed based on the spatial dissimilarity between target and background to further enhance target while suppressing background.Finally,the location of target is obtained by adaptive threshold segmentation.As experimental results demonstrate,the method shows superior performance in several evaluation metrics compared with six existing algorithms on different datasets containing targets such as unmanned aerial vehicles(UAV).

An Efficient Radar Detection Method of Maneuvering Small Targets

Detection of maneuvering small targets has always been an important yet challenging task for radar signal processing.One primary reason is that target variable motions within coherent processing interval generate energy migrations across multiple resolution bins,which severely deteriorate the parameter estimation performance.A coarse-to-fine strategy for the detection of maneuvering small targets is proposed.Integration of small points segmented coherently is performed first,and then an optimal inter-segment integration is utilized to derive the coarse estimation of the chirp rate.Sparse fractional Fourier transform(FrFT)is then employed to refine the coarse estimation at a significantly reduced computational complexity.Simulation results verify the proposed scheme that achieves an efficient and reliable maneuvering target detection with-16dB input signal-to-noise ratio(SNR),while requires no exact a priori knowledge on the motion parameters.

Improved Small Target Detection Method for SAR Image Based on YOLOv7

In order to solve the problems that the current synthetic aperture radar(SAR)image target detection method cannot adapt to targets of different sizes,and the complex image background leads to low detection accuracy,an improved SAR image small target detection method based on YOLOv7 was proposed in this study.The proposed method improved the feature extraction network by using Switchable Around Convolution(SAConv)in the backbone network to help the model capture target information at different scales,thus improving the feature extraction ability for small targets.Based on the attention mechanism,the DyHead module was embedded in the target detection head to reduce the impact of complex background,and better focus on the small targets.In addition,the NWD loss function was introduced and combined with CIoU loss.Compared to the CIoU loss function typically used in YOLOv7,the NWD loss function pays more attention to the processing of small targets,so as to further improve the detection ability of small targets.The experimental results on the HRSID dataset indicate that the proposed method achieved mAP@0.5 and mAP@0.95 scores of 93.5%and 71.5%,respectively.Compared to the baseline model,this represents an increase of 7.2%and 7.6%,respectively.The proposed method can effectively complete the task of SAR image small target detection.

Novel detection method for infrared small targets using weighted information entropy

This paper presents a method for detecting the small infrared target under complex background. An algorithm, named local mutation weighted information entropy （LMWIE）, is proposed to suppress background. Then, the grey value of targets is enhanced by calculating the local energy. Image segmentation based on the adaptive threshold is used to solve the problems that the grey value of noise is enhanced with the grey value improvement of targets. Experimental results show that compared with the adaptive Butterworth high-pass filter method, the proposed algorithm is more effective and faster for the infrared small target detection.

Short-time maritime target detection based on polarization scattering characteristics

In this paper,a detection method combining Cameron decomposition based on polarization scattering characteristics in sea clutter background is proposed.Firstly,the Cameron decomposition is exploited to fuse the radar echoes of full polarization channels at the data level.Due to the artificial material structure on the surface of the target,it can be shown that the non-reciprocity of the target cell is stronger than that of the clutter cell.Then,based on the analysis of the decomposition results,a new feature with scattering geometry characteristics in polarization domain,denoted as Cameron polarization decomposition scattering weight(CPD-SW),is extracted as the test statistic,which can achieve more detailed descriptions of the clutter scattering characteristics utilizing the difference between their scattering types.Finally,the superiority of the proposed CPD-SW detector over traditional detectors in improving detection performance is verified by the IPIX measured dataset,which has strong stability under short-time observation in threshold detection and can also improve the separability of feature space zin anomaly detection.

Adversarial Defense Technology for Small Infrared Targets

With the rapid development of deep learning-based detection algorithms,deep learning is widely used in the field of infrared small target detection.However,well-designed adversarial samples can fool human visual perception,directly causing a serious decline in the detection quality of the recognition model.In this paper,an adversarial defense technology for small infrared targets is proposed to improve model robustness.The adversarial samples with strong migration can not only improve the generalization of defense technology,but also save the training cost.Therefore,this study adopts the concept of maximizing multidimensional feature distortion,applying noise to clean samples to serve as subsequent training samples.On this basis,this study proposes an inverse perturbation elimination method based on Generative Adversarial Networks(GAN)to realize the adversarial defense,and design the generator and discriminator for infrared small targets,aiming to make both of them compete with each other to continuously improve the performance of the model,find out the commonalities and differences between the adversarial samples and the original samples.Through experimental verification,our defense algorithm is not only able to cope with multiple attacks but also performs well on different recognition models compared to commonly used defense algorithms,making it a plug-and-play efficient adversarial defense technique.

A pixel-level local contrast measure for infrared small target detection

Infrared(IR) small target detection is one of the key technologies of infrared search and track(IRST)systems. Existing methods have some limitations in detection performance, especially when the target size is irregular or the background is complex. In this paper, we propose a pixel-level local contrast measure(PLLCM), which can subdivide small targets and backgrounds at pixel level simultaneously.With pixel-level segmentation, the difference between the target and the background becomes more obvious, which helps to improve the detection performance. First, we design a multiscale sliding window to quickly extract candidate target pixels. Then, a local window based on random walker(RW) is designed for pixel-level target segmentation. After that, PLLCM incorporating probability weights and scale constraints is proposed to accurately measure local contrast and suppress various types of background interference. Finally, an adaptive threshold operation is applied to separate the target from the PLLCM enhanced map. Experimental results show that the proposed method has a higher detection rate and a lower false alarm rate than the baseline algorithms, while achieving a high speed.

A New Method of Small Moving Target Detection and Its Performance Analysis

This paper describes a new method of small moving target detection and analyzes the performance of this algorithm. The method is based on multi-level threshold decision-making and sliding trajectory confidence testing technology. The parameters of the algorithm are also given. Experiments have been conducted, the results show that the algorithm has advantages of high detection probability, simple structure, and excellent real-time performance.

Dim Moving Small Target Detection by Local and Global Variance Filtering on Temporal Profiles in Infrared Sequences

In this paper, the temporal different characteristics between the target and background pixels are used to detect dim moving targets in the slow-evolving complex background. A local and global variance filter on temporal profiles is presented that addresses the temporal characteristics of the target and background pixels to eliminate the large variation of background temporal profiles. Firstly, the temporal behaviors of different types of image pixels of practical infrared scenes are analyzed.Then, the new local and global variance filter is proposed. The baseline of the fluctuation level of background temporal profiles is obtained by using the local and global variance filter. The height of the target pulse signal is extracted by subtracting the baseline from the original temporal profiles. Finally, a new target detection criterion is designed. The proposed method is applied to detect dim and small targets in practical infrared sequence images. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has good detection performance for dim moving small targets in the complex background.

A Novel SAR Image Ship Small Targets Detection Method

To satisfy practical requirements of high real-time accuracy and low computational complexity of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image ship small target detection, this paper proposes a small ship target detection method based on the improved You Only Look Once Version 3 (YOLOv3). The main contributions of this study are threefold. First, the feature extraction network of the original YOLOV3 algorithm is replaced with the VGG16 network convolution layer. Second, general convolution is transformed into depthwise separable convolution, thereby reducing the computational cost of the algorithm. Third, a residual network structure is introduced into the feature extraction network to reuse the shallow target feature information, which enhances the detailed features of the target and ensures the improvement in accuracy of small target detection performance. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, many experiments are conducted on public SAR image datasets. For ship targets with complex backgrounds and small ship targets in the SAR image, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified. Results show that the accuracy and recall rate improved by 5.31% and 2.77%, respectively, compared with the original YOLOV3. Furthermore, the proposed model not only significantly reduces the computational effort, but also improves the detection accuracy of ship small target.

Infrared Small Target Detection Algorithm Based on ISTD-CenterNet

This paper proposes a real-time detection method to improve the Infrared small target detection CenterNet(ISTD-CenterNet)network for detecting small infrared targets in complex environments.The method eliminates the need for an anchor frame,addressing the issues of low accuracy and slow speed.HRNet is used as the framework for feature extraction,and an ECBAM attention module is added to each stage branch for intelligent identification of the positions of small targets and significant objects.A scale enhancement module is also added to obtain a high-level semantic representation and fine-resolution prediction map for the entire infrared image.Besides,an improved sensory field enhancement module is designed to leverage semantic information in low-resolution feature maps,and a convolutional attention mechanism module is used to increase network stability and convergence speed.Comparison experiments conducted on the infrared small target data set ESIRST.The experiments show that compared to the benchmark network CenterNet-HRNet,the proposed ISTD-CenterNet improves the recall by 22.85%and the detection accuracy by 13.36%.Compared to the state-of-the-art YOLOv5small,the ISTD-CenterNet recall is improved by 5.88%,the detection precision is improved by 2.33%,and the detection frame rate is 48.94 frames/sec,which realizes the accurate real-time detection of small infrared targets.

LF-CNN:Deep Learning-Guided Small Sample Target Detection for Remote Sensing Classification

Target detection of small samples with a complex background is always difficult in the classification of remote sensing images.We propose a new small sample target detection method combining local features and a convolutional neural network(LF-CNN)with the aim of detecting small numbers of unevenly distributed ground object targets in remote sensing images.The k-nearest neighbor method is used to construct the local neighborhood of each point and the local neighborhoods of the features are extracted one by one from the convolution layer.All the local features are aggregated by maximum pooling to obtain global feature representation.The classification probability of each category is then calculated and classified using the scaled expected linear units function and the full connection layer.The experimental results show that the proposed LF-CNN method has a high accuracy of target detection and classification for hyperspectral imager remote sensing data under the condition of small samples.Despite drawbacks in both time and complexity,the proposed LF-CNN method can more effectively integrate the local features of ground object samples and improve the accuracy of target identification and detection in small samples of remote sensing images than traditional target detection methods.

A Small Target Detection Method for Sea Surface Based on Guided Filtering and Local Mean Gray Difference

The traditional small target detection algorithm often results in a high false alarm rate on the sea surface background. To address this issue, a small target detection method based on guided filtering and local average gray level difference was proposed in this paper for the sea surface. Firstly, the method enhanced the details of the small targets by employing guided filtering to suppress the background clutter and noise in the sea surface image. Subsequently, the local average gray level difference of each point in the image was calculated to further distinguish the targets from other interference points. Finally, the threshold segmentation method was utilized to obtain the actual small targets on the sea surface. After conducting experiments on various sea surface scenes, the LSCRG, BSF, and ROC curve were computed for the proposed method and five other algorithms. Comparative analysis with BS, Top-hat, TDLMS, Max-median, and LCM demonstrates the superiority of the proposed method for infrared small target detection on the sea surface.

CAFUNeT:A small infrared target detection method in complex backgrounds

Small infrared target detection has widespread applications in various fields including military,aviation,and medicine.However,detecting small infrared targets in complex backgrounds remains challenging.To detect small infrared targets,we propose a variable-structure U-shaped network referred as CAFUNet.A central differential convolution-based encoder,ASPP,an Attention Fusion module,and a decoder module are the critical components of the CAFUNet.The encoder module based on central difference convolution effectively extracts shallow detail information from infrared images,complemented by rich contextual information obtained from the deep features in the decoder module.However,the direct fusion of the shallow detail features with semantic features may lead to feature mismatch.To address this,we incorporate an Attention Fusion(AF)module to enhance the network performance further.We performed ablation studies on each module to evaluate its effectiveness.The results show that our proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on publicly available datasets.

Infrared Image Small Target Detection Based on Bi-orthogonal Wavelet and Morphology

An image multi-scale edge detection method based on anti-symmetrical bi-orthogonal wavelet is given in theory. Convolution operation property and function as a differential operator are analyzed,which anti-symmetrical bi-orthogonal wavelet transform have. An algorithm for wavelet reconstruction in which multi-scale edge can be detected is put forward. Based on it, a detection method for small target in infrared image with sea or sky background based on the anti-symmetrical bi-orthogonal wavelet and morphology is proposed. The small target detection is considered as a process in which structural background is removed, correlative background is suppressed, and noise is restrained. In this approach, the multi-scale edge is extracted by means of the anti-symmetrical bi-orthogonal wavelet decomposition. Then, module maximum chains formed by complicated background of clouds, sea wave and sea-sky-line are removed, and the image background becomes smoother. Finally, the morphology based edge detection method is used to get small target and restrain undulate background and noise. Experiment results show that the approach can suppress clutter background and detect the small target effectively.

Nanoparticles for targeted delivery of therapeutics and small interfering RNAs in hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC) is the 5th most common malignancy which is responsible for more than half million annual mortalities; also, it is the third leading cause of cancer related death. Unfavorablesystemic side-effects of chemotherapeutic agents and susceptibility to the degradation of small interfering RNAs(si RNAs), which can knock down a specific gene involved in the disease, have hampered their clinical application. So, it could be beneficial to develop an efficient carrier for the stabilization and specific delivery of drugs and si RNA to cells. Targeted nanoparticles have gained considerable attention as an efficient drug and gene delivery system, which is due to their capability in achieving the highest accumulation of cytotoxic agents in tumor tissue, modifiable drug pharmacokinetic- and bio-distribution, improved effectiveness of treatment, and limited sideeffects. Recent studies have shed more light on the advantages of novel drug loaded carrier systems vs free drugs. Most of the animal studies have reported improvement in treatment efficacy and survival rate using novel carrier systems. Targeted delivery may be achieved passively or actively. In passive targeting, no ligand as homing device is used, while targeting is achieved by incorporating the therapeutic agent into a macromolecule or nanoparticle that passively reaches the target organ. However, in active targeting, the therapeutic agent or carrier system is conjugated to a tissue or cell-specific receptor which is overexpressed in a special malignancy using a ligand called a homing device. This review covers a broad spectrum of targeted nanoparticles as therapeutic and nonviral si RNA delivery systems, which are developed for enhanced cellular uptake and targeted gene silencing in vitro and in vivo and their characteristics and opportunities for the clinical applications of drugs and therapeutic si RNA are discussed in this article. Asialoglycoprotein receptors, low-density lipoprotein, ganglioside GM1 cell surface ligand, epidermal growth factor receptor receptors, monoclonal antibodies, retinoic acid receptors, integrin receptors targeted by Arg-Gly-Asp peptide, folate, and transferrin receptors are the most widely studied cell surface receptors which are used for the site specific delivery of drugs and si RNA-based therapeutics in HCC and discussed in detail in this article.

Using deep learning to detect small targets in infrared oversampling images

According to the oversampling imaging characteristics, an infrared small target detection method based on deep learning is proposed. A 7-layer deep convolutional neural network(CNN) is designed to automatically extract small target features and suppress clutters in an end-to-end manner. The input of CNN is an original oversampling image while the output is a cluttersuppressed feature map. The CNN contains only convolution and non-linear operations, and the resolution of the output feature map is the same as that of the input image. The L1-norm loss function is used, and a mass of training data is generated to train the network effectively. Results show that compared with several baseline methods, the proposed method improves the signal clutter ratio gain and background suppression factor by 3–4 orders of magnitude, and has more powerful target detection performance.

Adaptive modified hough transform track initiator forHFSWR tracking of fast and small targets

High frequency surface wave radar (HFSWR) is well proved to have over the horizon (OTH) detection capability to weak aerial targets, such as concealed airplanes or cruise missiles. The most important problem of detection of fast and small targets using HFSWR is earlier warning, i.e. enlargement of detection range oftargets. Therefore, the detection threshold should be decreased as low as possible, but numerous false alarms are brought about at the same time. On this condition, conventional track initiation techniques, which normally require the probability of false alarm to be at the level of 10-6, will initiate enormous false tracks and lead to abnormal operation of tracking system. An adaptive modified hough transform (AMHT) track initiator is proposed accordingly and the relation of detection range to the performance of track initiator is analyzed in this paper. Simulations are performed to confirm the capability of track initiation to fast and small targets in dense clutter by AMHT track initiator. The tolerable probability of false alarm of detector can reach the level of 10 -3 . And it performs better than track initiator based on modified hough transform (MHT).