# Salient Object Detection via Dynamic Scale Routing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.13821 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13821/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 48 of its 87 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Oct 2022.

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

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [Aggregated Residual Transformations for Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05431/) (2016)
- [Visualizing and Understanding Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1311.2901/) (2013)
- [Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections on Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07261/) (2016)
- [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)
- [Structure-measure: A New Way to Evaluate Foreground Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.00786/) (2017)
- [Res2Net: A New Multi-scale Backbone Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01169/) (2019)
- [Selective Kernel Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.06586/) (2019)
- [Enhanced-alignment Measure for Binary Foreground Map Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.10421/) (2018)
- [Dynamic Convolution: Attention over Convolution Kernels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.03458/) (2019)
- [SkipNet: Learning Dynamic Routing in Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09485/) (2017)
- [Dynamic Filter Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.09673/) (2016)
- [CondConv: Conditionally Parameterized Convolutions for Efficient Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.04971/) (2019)
- [EGNet:Edge Guidance Network for Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.08297/) (2019)
- [Cascaded Partial Decoder for Fast and Accurate Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08739/) (2019)
- [A Simple Pooling-Based Design for Real-Time Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09569/) (2019)
- [Multi-scale Interactive Network for Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09062/) (2020)
- [The Secrets of Salient Object Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2807/) (2014)
- [Deeply supervised salient object detection with short connections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.04849/) (2016)
- [BlockDrop: Dynamic Inference Paths in Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08393/) (2017)
- [F3Net: Fusion, Feedback and Focus for Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11445/) (2019)
- [Salient Object Detection in the Deep Learning Era: An In-Depth Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09146/) (2019)
- [Adaptive Neural Networks for Efficient Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.07811/) (2017)
- [Salient Object Detection via Integrity Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.07663/) (2021)
- [Salient Object Detection: A Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1501.02741/) (2015)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [SSFam: Scribble Supervised Salient Object Detection Family](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.04817/) (2024)
- [Uncertainty Guided Refinement for Fine-Grained Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09666/) (2025)
- [Assisted Refinement Network Based on Channel Information Interaction for Camouflaged and Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11369/) (2025)
- [A positive feedback method based on F-measure value for Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14619/) (2023)
- [Learning Spatially Adaptive Structural Coordination for Underwater Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15535/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent research advances in salient object detection (SOD) could largely be attributed to ever-stronger multi-scale feature representation empowered by the deep learning technologies. The existing SOD deep models extract multi-scale features via the off-the-shelf encoders and combine them smartly via various delicate decoders. However, the kernel sizes in this commonly-used thread are usually "fixed". In our new experiments, we have observed that kernels of small size are preferable in scenarios containing tiny salient objects. In contrast, large kernel sizes could perform better for images with large salient objects. Inspired by this observation, we advocate the "dynamic" scale routing (as a brand-new idea) in this paper. It will result in a generic plug-in that could directly fit the existing feature backbone. This paper's key technical innovations are two-fold. First, instead of using the vanilla convolution with fixed kernel sizes for the encoder design, we propose the dynamic pyramid convolution (DPConv), which dynamically selects the best-suited kernel sizes w.r.t. the given input. Second, we provide a self-adaptive bidirectional decoder design to accommodate the DPConv-based encoder best. The most significant highlight is its capability of routing between feature scales and their dynamic collection, making the inference process scale-aware. As a result, this paper continues to enhance the current SOTA performance. Both the code and dataset are publicly available at https://github.com/wuzhenyubuaa/DPNet.