Beyond Segmentation: An Oil Spill Change Detection Framework Using Synthetic SAR Imagery

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Lai, Chenyang, Chen, Shuaiyu, Huang, Tianjin, Song, Siyang, Cheng, Guangliang, Luo, Chunbo, Fu, Zeyu
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Lai, Chenyang
Chen, Shuaiyu
Huang, Tianjin
Song, Siyang
Cheng, Guangliang
Luo, Chunbo
Fu, Zeyu
author_facet Lai, Chenyang
Chen, Shuaiyu
Huang, Tianjin
Song, Siyang
Cheng, Guangliang
Luo, Chunbo
Fu, Zeyu
contents Marine oil spills are urgent environmental hazards that demand rapid and reliable detection to minimise ecological and economic damage. While Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery has become a key tool for large-scale oil spill monitoring, most existing detection methods rely on deep learning-based segmentation applied to single SAR images. These static approaches struggle to distinguish true oil spills from visually similar oceanic features (e.g., biogenic slicks or low-wind zones), leading to high false positive rates and limited generalizability, especially under data-scarce conditions. To overcome these limitations, we introduce Oil Spill Change Detection (OSCD), a new bi-temporal task that focuses on identifying changes between pre- and post-spill SAR images. As real co-registered pre-spill imagery is not always available, we propose the Temporal-Aware Hybrid Inpainting (TAHI) framework, which generates synthetic pre-spill images from post-spill SAR data. TAHI integrates two key components: High-Fidelity Hybrid Inpainting for oil-free reconstruction, and Temporal Realism Enhancement for radiometric and sea-state consistency. Using TAHI, we construct the first OSCD dataset and benchmark several state-of-the-art change detection models. Results show that OSCD significantly reduces false positives and improves detection accuracy compared to conventional segmentation, demonstrating the value of temporally-aware methods for reliable, scalable oil spill monitoring in real-world scenarios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_02139
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond Segmentation: An Oil Spill Change Detection Framework Using Synthetic SAR Imagery
Lai, Chenyang
Chen, Shuaiyu
Huang, Tianjin
Song, Siyang
Cheng, Guangliang
Luo, Chunbo
Fu, Zeyu
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Marine oil spills are urgent environmental hazards that demand rapid and reliable detection to minimise ecological and economic damage. While Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery has become a key tool for large-scale oil spill monitoring, most existing detection methods rely on deep learning-based segmentation applied to single SAR images. These static approaches struggle to distinguish true oil spills from visually similar oceanic features (e.g., biogenic slicks or low-wind zones), leading to high false positive rates and limited generalizability, especially under data-scarce conditions. To overcome these limitations, we introduce Oil Spill Change Detection (OSCD), a new bi-temporal task that focuses on identifying changes between pre- and post-spill SAR images. As real co-registered pre-spill imagery is not always available, we propose the Temporal-Aware Hybrid Inpainting (TAHI) framework, which generates synthetic pre-spill images from post-spill SAR data. TAHI integrates two key components: High-Fidelity Hybrid Inpainting for oil-free reconstruction, and Temporal Realism Enhancement for radiometric and sea-state consistency. Using TAHI, we construct the first OSCD dataset and benchmark several state-of-the-art change detection models. Results show that OSCD significantly reduces false positives and improves detection accuracy compared to conventional segmentation, demonstrating the value of temporally-aware methods for reliable, scalable oil spill monitoring in real-world scenarios.
title Beyond Segmentation: An Oil Spill Change Detection Framework Using Synthetic SAR Imagery
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02139