Multiple-oriented and small object detection with convolutional neural networks for aerial image

Abstract

Detecting objects in aerial images is a challenging task due to multiple orientations and relatively small size of the objects. Although many traditional detection models have demonstrated an acceptable performance by using the imagery pyramid and multiple templates in a sliding-window manner, such techniques are inefficient and costly. Recently, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have successfully been used for object detection, and they have demonstrated considerably superior performance than that of traditional detection methods; however, this success has not been expanded to aerial images. To overcome such problems, we propose a detection model based on two CNNs. One of the CNNs is designed to propose many object-like regions that are generated from the feature maps of multi scales and hierarchies with the orientation information. Based on such a design, the positioning of small size objects becomes more accurate, and the generated regions with orientation information are more suitable for the objects arranged with arbitrary orientations. Furthermore, another CNN is designed for object recognition; it first extracts the features of each generated region and subsequently makes the final decisions. The results of the extensive experiments performed on the vehicle detection in aerial imagery (VEDAI) and overhead imagery research data set (OIRDS) datasets indicate that the proposed model performs well in terms of not only the detection accuracy but also the detection speed.