Lightweight Deep Unfolding Networks with Enhanced Robustness for Infrared Small Target Detection

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liu, Jingjing, Han, Yinchao, Xiu, Xianchao, Zhang, Jianhua, Liu, Wanquan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Liu, Jingjing
Han, Yinchao
Xiu, Xianchao
Zhang, Jianhua
Liu, Wanquan
author_facet Liu, Jingjing
Han, Yinchao
Xiu, Xianchao
Zhang, Jianhua
Liu, Wanquan
contents Infrared small target detection (ISTD) is one of the key techniques in image processing. Although deep unfolding networks (DUNs) have demonstrated promising performance in ISTD due to their model interpretability and data adaptability, existing methods still face significant challenges in parameter lightweightness and noise robustness. In this regard, we propose a highly lightweight framework based on robust principal component analysis (RPCA) called L-RPCANet. Technically, a hierarchical bottleneck structure is constructed to reduce and increase the channel dimension in the single-channel input infrared image to achieve channel-wise feature refinement, with bottleneck layers designed in each module to extract features. This reduces the number of channels in feature extraction and improves the lightweightness of network parameters. Furthermore, a noise reduction module is embedded to enhance the robustness against complex noise. In addition, squeeze-and-excitation networks (SENets) are leveraged as a channel attention mechanism to focus on the varying importance of different features across channels, thereby achieving excellent performance while maintaining both lightweightness and robustness. Extensive experiments on the ISTD datasets validate the superiority of our proposed method compared with state-of-the-art methods covering RPCANet, DRPCANet, and RPCANet++. The code will be available at https://github.com/xianchaoxiu/L-RPCANet.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_08205
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Lightweight Deep Unfolding Networks with Enhanced Robustness for Infrared Small Target Detection
Liu, Jingjing
Han, Yinchao
Xiu, Xianchao
Zhang, Jianhua
Liu, Wanquan
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Infrared small target detection (ISTD) is one of the key techniques in image processing. Although deep unfolding networks (DUNs) have demonstrated promising performance in ISTD due to their model interpretability and data adaptability, existing methods still face significant challenges in parameter lightweightness and noise robustness. In this regard, we propose a highly lightweight framework based on robust principal component analysis (RPCA) called L-RPCANet. Technically, a hierarchical bottleneck structure is constructed to reduce and increase the channel dimension in the single-channel input infrared image to achieve channel-wise feature refinement, with bottleneck layers designed in each module to extract features. This reduces the number of channels in feature extraction and improves the lightweightness of network parameters. Furthermore, a noise reduction module is embedded to enhance the robustness against complex noise. In addition, squeeze-and-excitation networks (SENets) are leveraged as a channel attention mechanism to focus on the varying importance of different features across channels, thereby achieving excellent performance while maintaining both lightweightness and robustness. Extensive experiments on the ISTD datasets validate the superiority of our proposed method compared with state-of-the-art methods covering RPCANet, DRPCANet, and RPCANet++. The code will be available at https://github.com/xianchaoxiu/L-RPCANet.
title Lightweight Deep Unfolding Networks with Enhanced Robustness for Infrared Small Target Detection
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08205