Towards Size-invariant Salient Object Detection: A Generic Evaluation and Optimization Approach

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Hauptverfasser: Bao, Shilong, Xu, Qianqian, Li, Feiran, Han, Boyu, Yang, Zhiyong, Cao, Xiaochun, Huang, Qingming
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Bao, Shilong
Xu, Qianqian
Li, Feiran
Han, Boyu
Yang, Zhiyong
Cao, Xiaochun
Huang, Qingming
author_facet Bao, Shilong
Xu, Qianqian
Li, Feiran
Han, Boyu
Yang, Zhiyong
Cao, Xiaochun
Huang, Qingming
contents This paper investigates a fundamental yet underexplored issue in Salient Object Detection (SOD): the size-invariant property for evaluation protocols, particularly in scenarios when multiple salient objects of significantly different sizes appear within a single image. We first present a novel perspective to expose the inherent size sensitivity of existing widely used SOD metrics. Through careful theoretical derivations, we show that the evaluation outcome of an image under current SOD metrics can be essentially decomposed into a sum of several separable terms, with the contribution of each term being directly proportional to its corresponding region size. Consequently, the prediction errors would be dominated by the larger regions, while smaller yet potentially more semantically important objects are often overlooked, leading to biased performance assessments and practical degradation. To address this challenge, a generic Size-Invariant Evaluation (SIEva) framework is proposed. The core idea is to evaluate each separable component individually and then aggregate the results, thereby effectively mitigating the impact of size imbalance across objects. Building upon this, we further develop a dedicated optimization framework (SIOpt), which adheres to the size-invariant principle and significantly enhances the detection of salient objects across a broad range of sizes. Notably, SIOpt is model-agnostic and can be seamlessly integrated with a wide range of SOD backbones. Theoretically, we also present generalization analysis of SOD methods and provide evidence supporting the validity of our new evaluation protocols. Finally, comprehensive experiments speak to the efficacy of our proposed approach. The code is available at https://github.com/Ferry-Li/SI-SOD.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_15573
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards Size-invariant Salient Object Detection: A Generic Evaluation and Optimization Approach
Bao, Shilong
Xu, Qianqian
Li, Feiran
Han, Boyu
Yang, Zhiyong
Cao, Xiaochun
Huang, Qingming
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
This paper investigates a fundamental yet underexplored issue in Salient Object Detection (SOD): the size-invariant property for evaluation protocols, particularly in scenarios when multiple salient objects of significantly different sizes appear within a single image. We first present a novel perspective to expose the inherent size sensitivity of existing widely used SOD metrics. Through careful theoretical derivations, we show that the evaluation outcome of an image under current SOD metrics can be essentially decomposed into a sum of several separable terms, with the contribution of each term being directly proportional to its corresponding region size. Consequently, the prediction errors would be dominated by the larger regions, while smaller yet potentially more semantically important objects are often overlooked, leading to biased performance assessments and practical degradation. To address this challenge, a generic Size-Invariant Evaluation (SIEva) framework is proposed. The core idea is to evaluate each separable component individually and then aggregate the results, thereby effectively mitigating the impact of size imbalance across objects. Building upon this, we further develop a dedicated optimization framework (SIOpt), which adheres to the size-invariant principle and significantly enhances the detection of salient objects across a broad range of sizes. Notably, SIOpt is model-agnostic and can be seamlessly integrated with a wide range of SOD backbones. Theoretically, we also present generalization analysis of SOD methods and provide evidence supporting the validity of our new evaluation protocols. Finally, comprehensive experiments speak to the efficacy of our proposed approach. The code is available at https://github.com/Ferry-Li/SI-SOD.
title Towards Size-invariant Salient Object Detection: A Generic Evaluation and Optimization Approach
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15573