# MTU-Net: Multi-level TransUNet for Space-based Infrared Tiny Ship Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.13756 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13756/

## Key facts

- Cited by 48 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Sep 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [TransUNet: Transformers Make Strong Encoders for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04306/) (2021)
- [Simple Copy-Paste is a Strong Data Augmentation Method for Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07177/) (2020)
- [ResUNet-a: a deep learning framework for semantic segmentation of remotely sensed data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00592/) (2019)
- [Asymmetric Contextual Modulation for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.14530/) (2020)
- [Dense Nested Attention Network for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.00487/) (2021)
- [Attentional Local Contrast Networks for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.08573/) (2020)
- [Reweighted Infrared Patch-Tensor Model With Both Non-Local and Local Priors for Single-Frame Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.09157/) (2017)
- [RarePlanes: Synthetic Data Takes Flight](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.02963/) (2020)
- [Contrastive Triple Extraction with Generative Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.06207/) (2020)
- [Infrared Small-Dim Target Detection with Transformer under Complex Backgrounds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.14379/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 48)

- [SCTransNet: Spatial-channel Cross Transformer Network for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15583/) (2024)
- [Visible-Thermal Tiny Object Detection: A Benchmark Dataset and Baselines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14482/) (2024)
- [Monte Carlo Linear Clustering with Single-Point Supervision is Enough for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04442/) (2023)
- [Pick of the Bunch: Detecting Infrared Small Targets Beyond Hit-Miss Trade-Offs via Selective Rank-Aware Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03717/) (2024)
- [Multi-Scale Direction-Aware Network for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02037/) (2024)
- [EWT: Efficient Wavelet-Transformer for Single Image Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06274/) (2023)
- [Probing Deep into Temporal Profile Makes the Infrared Small Target Detector Much Better](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12766/) (2025)
- [DRPCA-Net: Make Robust PCA Great Again for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.09541/) (2025)
- [Background Semantics Matter: Cross-Task Feature Exchange Network for Clustered Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.20078/) (2024)
- [Infrared Small Target Detection in Satellite Videos: A New Dataset and A Novel Recurrent Feature Refinement Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12448/) (2024)
- [Towards Robust Infrared Small Target Detection: A Feature-Enhanced and Sensitivity-Tunable Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.20090/) (2024)
- [Beyond Full Labels: Energy-Double-Guided Single-Point Prompt for Infrared Small Target Label Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08191/) (2024)
- [ASCNet: Asymmetric Sampling Correction Network for Infrared Image Destriping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15578/) (2024)
- [Deep learning based infrared small object segmentation: Challenges and future directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.14168/) (2025)
- [SDS-Net: Shallow-Deep Synergism-detection Network for infrared small target detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06042/) (2025)
- [Rethinking Evaluation of Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16888/) (2025)
- [Dynamic High-frequency Convolution for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02969/) (2026)
- [Paying more attention to local contrast: improving infrared small target detection performance via prior knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.13260/) (2024)
- [CSPENet: Contour-Aware and Saliency Priors Embedding Network for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09943/) (2025)
- [AuxDet: Auxiliary Metadata Matters for Omni-Domain Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15184/) (2025)
- [RRCANet: Recurrent Reusable-Convolution Attention Network for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02393/) (2025)
- [It's Not the Target, It's the Background: Rethinking Infrared Small Target Detection via Deep Patch-Free Low-Rank Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10425/) (2025)
- [Revisiting the Scale Loss Function and Gaussian-Shape Convolution for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09991/) (2026)
- [Improved Dense Nested Attention Network Based on Transformer for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.08747/) (2023)
- [DestripeCycleGAN: Stripe Simulation CycleGAN for Unsupervised Infrared Image Destriping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09101/) (2024)
- [The First Competition on Resource-Limited Infrared Small Target Detection Challenge: Methods and Results](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.09615/) (2024)
- [10K is Enough: An Ultra-Lightweight Binarized Network for Infrared Small-Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02662/) (2025)
- [LoHGNet: Infrared Small Target Detection through Lorentz Geometric Encoding with High-Order Relation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07213/) (2026)
- [CFPFormer: Feature-pyramid like Transformer Decoder for Segmentation and Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15451/) (2024)
- [Learning Dynamic Local Context Representations for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17401/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Space-based infrared tiny ship detection aims at separating tiny ships from the images captured by earth orbiting satellites. Due to the extremely large image coverage area (e.g., thousands square kilometers), candidate targets in these images are much smaller, dimer, more changeable than those targets observed by aerial-based and land-based imaging devices. Existing short imaging distance-based infrared datasets and target detection methods cannot be well adopted to the space-based surveillance task. To address these problems, we develop a space-based infrared tiny ship detection dataset (namely, NUDT-SIRST-Sea) with 48 space-based infrared images and 17598 pixel-level tiny ship annotations. Each image covers about 10000 square kilometers of area with 10000X10000 pixels. Considering the extreme characteristics (e.g., small, dim, changeable) of those tiny ships in such challenging scenes, we propose a multi-level TransUNet (MTU-Net) in this paper. Specifically, we design a Vision Transformer (ViT) Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) hybrid encoder to extract multi-level features. Local feature maps are first extracted by several convolution layers and then fed into the multi-level feature extraction module (MVTM) to capture long-distance dependency. We further propose a copy-rotate-resize-paste (CRRP) data augmentation approach to accelerate the training phase, which effectively alleviates the issue of sample imbalance between targets and background. Besides, we design a FocalIoU loss to achieve both target localization and shape description. Experimental results on the NUDT-SIRST-Sea dataset show that our MTU-Net outperforms traditional and existing deep learning based SIRST methods in terms of probability of detection, false alarm rate and intersection over union.