# SalienDet: A Saliency-based Feature Enhancement Algorithm for Object Detection for Autonomous Driving

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.06940 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06940/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 41 of its 69 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 May 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [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)
- [Fast R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.08083/) (2015)
- [YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02767/) (2018)
- [Deep Inside Convolutional Networks: Visualising Image Classification Models and Saliency Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6034/) (2013)
- [Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1311.2524/) (2013)
- [YOLOv4: Optimal Speed and Accuracy of Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10934/) (2020)
- [YOLO9000: Better, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.08242/) (2016)
- [Cascade R-CNN: Delving into High Quality Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.00726/) (2017)
- [Bridging the Gap Between Anchor-based and Anchor-free Detection via Adaptive Training Sample Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02424/) (2019)
- [Object Detection with Deep Learning: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.05511/) (2018)
- [Sparse R-CNN: End-to-End Object Detection with Learnable Proposals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12450/) (2020)
- [Cascade R-CNN: High Quality Object Detection and Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.09756/) (2019)
- [A Survey of Deep Learning Techniques for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07738/) (2019)
- [Towards Open World Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02603/) (2021)
- [Libra R-CNN: Towards Balanced Learning for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.02701/) (2019)
- [Towards Open World Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.5687/) (2014)
- [OW-DETR: Open-world Detection Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01513/) (2021)
- [Dropout Sampling for Robust Object Detection in Open-Set Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.06677/) (2017)
- [Learning Open-World Object Proposals without Learning to Classify](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06753/) (2021)
- [Rethinking Classification and Localization for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06493/) (2019)
- [OpenMix: Reviving Known Knowledge for Discovering Novel Visual Categories in An Open World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05551/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Delving into Multi-modal Multi-task Foundation Models for Road Scene Understanding: From Learning Paradigm Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02968/) (2024)
- [Advancing Chart Question Answering with Robust Chart Component Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21038/) (2024)
- [Image-Guided Outdoor LiDAR Perception Quality Assessment for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17265/) (2024)
- [Guiding Attention in End-to-End Driving Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00242/) (2024)
- [Evaluating Scenario-based Decision-making for Interactive Autonomous Driving Using Rational Criteria: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01886/) (2025)
- [DriverGaze360: OmniDirectional Driver Attention with Object-Level Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14266/) (2025)
- [Revisiting Salient Object Detection from an Observer-Centric Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06369/) (2026)
- [Liquid Fusion of Heterogeneous Representations Towards General Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.26849/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Object detection (OD) is crucial to autonomous driving. On the other hand, unknown objects, which have not been seen in training sample set, are one of the reasons that hinder autonomous vehicles from driving beyond the operational domain. To addresss this issue, we propose a saliency-based OD algorithm (SalienDet) to detect unknown objects. Our SalienDet utilizes a saliency-based algorithm to enhance image features for object proposal generation. Moreover, we design a dataset relabeling approach to differentiate the unknown objects from all objects in training sample set to achieve Open-World Detection. To validate the performance of SalienDet, we evaluate SalienDet on KITTI, nuScenes, and BDD datasets, and the result indicates that it outperforms existing algorithms for unknown object detection. Notably, SalienDet can be easily adapted for incremental learning in open-world detection tasks. The project page is urlhttps://github.com/dingmike001/SalienDet-Open-Detection.git.