# RFLA: Gaussian Receptive Field based Label Assignment for Tiny Object Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.08738 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.08738/

## Key facts

- Cited by 51 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 48 of its 66 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Aug 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 48)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [Deformable DETR: Deformable Transformers for End-to-End Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04159/) (2020)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02767/) (2018)
- [YOLOv4: Optimal Speed and Accuracy of Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10934/) (2020)
- [FCOS: Fully Convolutional One-Stage Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01355/) (2019)
- [YOLO9000: Better, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.08242/) (2016)
- [MMDetection: Open MMLab Detection Toolbox and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.07155/) (2019)
- [Generalized Intersection over Union: A Metric and A Loss for Bounding Box Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09630/) (2019)
- [Cascade R-CNN: Delving into High Quality Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.00726/) (2017)
- [EfficientDet: Scalable and Efficient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09070/) (2019)
- [Path Aggregation Network for Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.01534/) (2018)
- [CornerNet: Detecting Objects as Paired Keypoints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.01244/) (2018)
- [Understanding the Effective Receptive Field in Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.04128/) (2017)
- [Bridging the Gap Between Anchor-based and Anchor-free Detection via Adaptive Training Sample Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02424/) (2019)
- [Sparse R-CNN: End-to-End Object Detection with Learnable Proposals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12450/) (2020)
- [RepPoints: Point Set Representation for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.11490/) (2019)
- [DetectoRS: Detecting Objects with Recursive Feature Pyramid and Switchable Atrous Convolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.02334/) (2020)
- [UnitBox: An Advanced Object Detection Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.01471/) (2016)
- [Object Detection in Aerial Images: A Large-Scale Benchmark and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12219/) (2021)
- [OTA: Optimal Transport Assignment for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14259/) (2021)
- [Scale-Aware Trident Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.01892/) (2019)
- [Rethinking Rotated Object Detection with Gaussian Wasserstein Distance Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.11952/) (2021)
- [Probabilistic Anchor Assignment with IoU Prediction for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08103/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [Dynamic Coarse-to-Fine Learning for Oriented Tiny Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08876/) (2023)
- [COCO-O: A Benchmark for Object Detectors under Natural Distribution Shifts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12730/) (2023)
- [DQ-DETR: DETR with Dynamic Query for Tiny Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03507/) (2024)
- [Small Object Detection via Coarse-to-fine Proposal Generation and Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09534/) (2023)
- [Visible-Thermal Tiny Object Detection: A Benchmark Dataset and Baselines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14482/) (2024)
- [One-Stage Cascade Refinement Networks for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08472/) (2022)
- [HS-FPN: High Frequency and Spatial Perception FPN for Tiny Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10116/) (2024)
- [Remote Sensing Object Detection Meets Deep Learning: A Meta-review of Challenges and Advances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06751/) (2023)
- [Multiview Aerial Visual Recognition (MAVREC): Can Multi-view Improve Aerial Visual Perception?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04548/) (2023)
- [Event-based Tiny Object Detection: A Benchmark Dataset and Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23575/) (2025)
- [A DeNoising FPN With Transformer R-CNN for Tiny Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05755/) (2024)
- [YOLC: You Only Look Clusters for Tiny Object Detection in Aerial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06180/) (2024)
- [Multi-clue Consistency Learning to Bridge Gaps Between General and Oriented Object in Semi-supervised Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05909/) (2024)
- [Visible and Clear: Finding Tiny Objects in Difference Map](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11276/) (2024)
- [Learning Remote Sensing Object Detection with Single Point Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14141/) (2023)
- [Dome-DETR: DETR with Density-Oriented Feature-Query Manipulation for Efficient Tiny Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05741/) (2025)
- [Similarity Distance-Based Label Assignment for Tiny Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02394/) (2024)
- [Robust Tiny Object Detection in Aerial Images amidst Label Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08056/) (2024)
- [Exploiting Unlabeled Data with Multiple Expert Teachers for Open Vocabulary Aerial Object Detection and Its Orientation Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02057/) (2024)
- [Rethinking the backbone architecture for tiny object detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11267/) (2023)
- [Oriented Tiny Object Detection: A Dataset, Benchmark, and Dynamic Unbiased Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11582/) (2024)
- [SO-DETR: Leveraging Dual-Domain Features and Knowledge Distillation for Small Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11470/) (2025)
- [Uncertainty-Aware Gradient Stabilization for Small Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01803/) (2023)
- [The Importance of Anti-Aliasing in Tiny Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14221/) (2023)
- [AuxDet: Auxiliary Metadata Matters for Omni-Domain Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15184/) (2025)
- [MVA 2025 Small Multi-Object Tracking for Spotting Birds Challenge: Dataset, Methods, and Results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12832/) (2025)
- [COXNet: Cross-Layer Fusion with Adaptive Alignment and Scale Integration for RGBT Tiny Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09533/) (2025)
- [Cross-DINO: Cross the Deep MLP and Transformer for Small Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21868/) (2025)
- [Bridging the Scale Gap: Balanced Tiny and General Object Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.01665/) (2025)
- [Generalized Small Object Detection:A Point-Prompted Paradigm and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.02773/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Detecting tiny objects is one of the main obstacles hindering the development of object detection. The performance of generic object detectors tends to drastically deteriorate on tiny object detection tasks. In this paper, we point out that either box prior in the anchor-based detector or point prior in the anchor-free detector is sub-optimal for tiny objects. Our key observation is that the current anchor-based or anchor-free label assignment paradigms will incur many outlier tiny-sized ground truth samples, leading to detectors imposing less focus on the tiny objects. To this end, we propose a Gaussian Receptive Field based Label Assignment (RFLA) strategy for tiny object detection. Specifically, RFLA first utilizes the prior information that the feature receptive field follows Gaussian distribution. Then, instead of assigning samples with IoU or center sampling strategy, a new Receptive Field Distance (RFD) is proposed to directly measure the similarity between the Gaussian receptive field and ground truth. Considering that the IoU-threshold based and center sampling strategy are skewed to large objects, we further design a Hierarchical Label Assignment (HLA) module based on RFD to achieve balanced learning for tiny objects. Extensive experiments on four datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. Especially, our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art competitors with 4.0 AP points on the AI-TOD dataset. Codes are available at https://github.com/Chasel-Tsui/mmdet-rfla