mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

RRSIS: Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentation

arXiv 2306.08625 ↗First posted 14 Jun 2023cs.CVcited by 59

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Abstract (arXiv)

Localizing desired objects from remote sensing images is of great use in practical applications. Referring image segmentation, which aims at segmenting out the objects to which a given expression refers, has been extensively studied in natural images. However, almost no research attention is given to this task of remote sensing imagery. Considering its potential for real-world applications, in this paper, we introduce referring remote sensing image segmentation (RRSIS) to fill in this gap and make some insightful explorations. Specifically, we create a new dataset, called RefSegRS, for this task, enabling us to evaluate different methods. Afterward, we benchmark referring image segmentation methods of natural images on the RefSegRS dataset and find that these models show limited efficacy in detecting small and scattered objects. To alleviate this issue, we propose a language-guided cross-scale enhancement (LGCE) module that utilizes linguistic features to adaptively enhance multi-scale visual features by integrating both deep and shallow features. The proposed dataset, benchmarking results, and the designed LGCE module provide insights into the design of a better RRSIS model. We will make our dataset and code publicly available.

Key facts. Cited by 59 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 38 of its 72 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 14 Jun 2023.

Builds on

38 of 72 references.

References · 38

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26 more
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  3. 2016DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFscited by 3,241
  4. 2021SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformerscited by 2,940
  5. 2015Fast R-CNNcited by 2,933
  6. 2021CRIS: CLIP-Driven Referring Image Segmentationcited by 353
  7. 2021LAVT: Language-Aware Vision Transformer for Referring Image Segmentationcited by 348
  8. 2019Object Detection in Optical Remote Sensing Images: A Survey and A New Benchmarkcited by 340
  9. 2019Cross-Modal Self-Attention Network for Referring Image Segmentationcited by 263
  10. 2016Segmentation from Natural Language Expressionscited by 257
  11. 2019BigEarthNet: A Large-Scale Benchmark Archive For Remote Sensing Image Understandingcited by 234
  12. 2020RSVQA: Visual Question Answering for Remote Sensing Datacited by 203
  13. 2017Exploring Models and Data for Remote Sensing Image Caption Generationcited by 197
  14. 2023PolyFormer: Referring Image Segmentation as Sequential Polygon Generationcited by 148
  15. 2017Recurrent Multimodal Interaction for Referring Image Segmentationcited by 125
  16. 2022RSVG: Exploring Data and Models for Visual Grounding on Remote Sensing Datacited by 123
  17. 2020PhraseCut: Language-based Image Segmentation in the Wildcited by 116
  18. 2021Encoder Fusion Network with Co-Attention Embedding for Referring Image Segmentationcited by 111
  19. 2021Locate then Segment: A Strong Pipeline for Referring Image Segmentationcited by 98
  20. 2018Dynamic Multimodal Instance Segmentation guided by natural language queriescited by 83
  21. 2022EarthNets: Empowering AI in Earth Observationcited by 40
  22. 2022From Easy to Hard: Learning Language-guided Curriculum for Visual Question Answering on Remote Sensing Datacited by 39
  23. 2023Multi-Modal Mutual Attention and Iterative Interaction for Referring Image Segmentationcited by 36
  24. 2021Change Detection Meets Visual Question Answeringcited by 29
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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 10; 2025: 29; 2026: 20.

59 papers.

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  1. 2024VRSBench: A Versatile Vision-Language Benchmark Dataset for Remote Sensing Image Understandingcited by 121
  2. 2024Toward Visual Grounding: A Surveycited by 52
  3. 2024GEOBench-VLM: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models for Geospatial Taskscited by 51
  4. 2025RemoteSAM: Towards Segment Anything for Earth Observationcited by 39
  5. 2024Towards Vision-Language Geo-Foundation Model: A Surveycited by 36
  6. 2024Cross-Modal Bidirectional Interaction Model for Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentationcited by 26
  7. 2024ChatEarthNet: A Global-Scale Image-Text Dataset Empowering Vision-Language Geo-Foundation Modelscited by 24
  8. 2024Exploring Fine-Grained Image-Text Alignment for Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentationcited by 24
  9. 2025RSRefSeg: Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentation with Foundation Modelscited by 22
  10. 2025Multimodal Referring Segmentation: A Surveycited by 22
  11. 2025Geo-R1: Improving Few-Shot Geospatial Referring Expression Understanding with Reinforcement Fine-Tuningcited by 20
  12. 2025EarthMind: Leveraging Cross-Sensor Data for Advanced Earth Observation Interpretation with a Unified Multimodal LLMcited by 18
38 more
  1. 2025RSRefSeg 2: Decoupling Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentation with Foundation Modelscited by 17
  2. 2025LISAT: Language-Instructed Segmentation Assistant for Satellite Imagerycited by 13
  3. 2025Intra- and Cross-Scale Feature Interaction Network for Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentationcited by 12
  4. 2025Scale-wise Bidirectional Alignment Network for Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentationcited by 11
  5. 2025A Benchmark for Ultra-High-Resolution Remote Sensing MLLMscited by 11
  6. 2025GeoPix: Multi-Modal Large Language Model for Pixel-level Image Understanding in Remote Sensingcited by 10
  7. 2025UniGeoSeg: Towards Unified Open-World Segmentation for Geospatial Scenescited by 10
  8. 2025SegEarth-R2: Towards Comprehensive Language-guided Segmentation for Remote Sensing Imagescited by 10
  9. 2025CADFormer: Fine-Grained Cross-modal Alignment and Decoding Transformer for Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentationcited by 9
  10. 2026RSGround-R1: Rethinking Remote Sensing Visual Grounding through Spatial Reasoningcited by 8
  11. 2026RemoteAgent: Bridging Vague Human Intents and Earth Observation with RL-based Agentic MLLMscited by 8
  12. 2024ImageRAG: Enhancing Ultra High Resolution Remote Sensing Imagery Analysis with ImageRAGcited by 6
  13. 2025GeoRSMLLM: A Multimodal Large Language Model for Vision-Language Tasks in Geoscience and Remote Sensingcited by 6
  14. 2025DiffRIS: Enhancing Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentation with Pre-trained Text-to-Image Diffusion Modelscited by 6
  15. 2025AeroReformer: Aerial Referring Transformer for UAV-based Referring Image Segmentationcited by 5
  16. 2025Multimodal-Aware Fusion Network for Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentationcited by 5
  17. 2025DescribeEarth: Describe Anything for Remote Sensing Imagescited by 5
  18. 2026CroBIM-U: Uncertainty-Driven Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentationcited by 5
  19. 2025RS2-SAM2: Customized SAM2 for Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentationcited by 4
  20. 2026DVGBench: Implicit-to-Explicit Visual Grounding Benchmark in UAV Imagery with Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 4
  21. 2026Earth-OneVision: Extending Remote Sensing Multimodal Large Language Models to More Sensor Modalities and Taskscited by 4
  22. 2024Prompting DirectSAM for Semantic Contour Extraction in Remote Sensing Imagescited by 3
  23. 2025Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentation with Cross-view Semantics Interaction Networkcited by 2
  24. 2025Generalized Referring Expression Segmentation on Aerial Photoscited by 2
  25. 2026Enabling Training-Free Text-Based Remote Sensing Segmentationcited by 2
  26. 2026Multi-label Instance-level Generalised Visual Grounding in Agriculturecited by 2
  27. 2024Advancements in Visual Language Models for Remote Sensing: Datasets, Capabilities, and Enhancement Techniquescited by 1
  28. 2025RIS-LAD: A Benchmark and Model for Referring Low-Altitude Drone Image Segmentationcited by 1
  29. 2026AgroVG: A Large-Scale Multi-Source Benchmark for Agricultural Visual Groundingcited by 1
  30. 2026An Open-Source Benchmark and Baseline for Multi-temporal Referring Segmentationcited by 1
  31. 2026CROSS: Cascaded Distillation and Dual-Constraint Grounding for Remote Sensing Referring Segmentationcited by 1
  32. 2025Breaking the Box: Enhancing Remote Sensing Image Segmentation with Freehand Sketchescited by 0
  33. 2025XeMap: Contextual Referring in Large-Scale Remote Sensing Environmentscited by 0
  34. 2025From Pixels to Images: A Structural Survey of Deep Learning Paradigms in Remote Sensing Image Semantic Segmentationcited by 0
  35. 2025DGL-RSIS: Decoupling Global Spatial Context and Local Class Semantics for Training-Free Remote Sensing Image Segmentationcited by 0
  36. 2025Understanding What Is Not Said:Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentation with Scarce Expressionscited by 0
  37. 2025GLACIA: Instance-Aware Positional Reasoning for Glacial Lake Segmentation via Multimodal Large Language Modelcited by 0
  38. 2026Image-Conditioned Instance Prompt Network for Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentationcited by 0

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