# RPCANet: Deep Unfolding RPCA Based Infrared Small Target Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.00917 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.00917/

## Key facts

- Cited by 44 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 21 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Nov 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [Fast R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.08083/) (2015)
- [FFDNet: Toward a Fast and Flexible Solution for CNN based Image Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.04026/) (2017)
- [Lipschitz regularity of deep neural networks: analysis and efficient estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.10965/) (2018)
- [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)
- [UIU-Net: U-Net in U-Net for Infrared Small Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00968/) (2022)
- [A Model-driven Deep Neural Network for Single Image Rain Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.01333/) (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)
- [AMP-Net: Denoising based Deep Unfolding for Compressive Image Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10078/) (2020)
- [Mapping Degeneration Meets Label Evolution: Learning Infrared Small Target Detection with Single Point Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01484/) (2023)
- [Video Processing from Electro-optical Sensors for Object Detection and Tracking in Maritime Environment: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05842/) (2016)
- [Deep Unfolded Robust PCA with Application to Clutter Suppression in Ultrasound](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.08252/) (2018)
- [ISTA-Net++: Flexible Deep Unfolding Network for Compressive Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11554/) (2021)
- [Robust Low-rank Tensor Recovery: Models and Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1311.6182/) (2013)
- [Learned Robust PCA: A Scalable Deep Unfolding Approach for High-Dimensional Outlier Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.05649/) (2021)
- [Deep Low-rank plus Sparse Network for Dynamic MR Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.13677/) (2020)
- [InDuDoNet+: A Deep Unfolding Dual Domain Network for Metal Artifact Reduction in CT Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12660/) (2021)
- [LR-CSNet: Low-Rank Deep Unfolding Network for Image Compressive Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09088/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [Triple-domain Feature Learning with Frequency-aware Memory Enhancement for Moving Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06949/) (2024)
- [Multi-Scale Direction-Aware Network for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02037/) (2024)
- [CAS-ViT: Convolutional Additive Self-attention Vision Transformers for Efficient Mobile Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03703/) (2024)
- [RPCANet++: Deep Interpretable Robust PCA for Sparse Object Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04190/) (2025)
- [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)
- [Infrared Small Target Detection in Satellite Videos: A New Dataset and A Novel Recurrent Feature Refinement Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12448/) (2024)
- [SMPISD-MTPNet: Scene Semantic Prior-Assisted Infrared Ship Detection Using Multi-Task Perception Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.18487/) (2024)
- [SRSNetwork: Siamese Reconstruction-Segmentation Networks based on Dynamic-Parameter Convolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.01741/) (2023)
- [Lightweight Deep Unfolding Networks with Enhanced Robustness for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.08205/) (2025)
- [Rethinking Evaluation of Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16888/) (2025)
- [SeqCSIST: Sequential Closely-Spaced Infrared Small Target Unmixing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.09556/) (2025)
- [Learnable Scaled Gradient Descent for Guaranteed Robust Tensor PCA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.04565/) (2025)
- [CSPENet: Contour-Aware and Saliency Priors Embedding Network for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09943/) (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)
- [TY-RIST: Tactical YOLO Tricks for Real-time Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22909/) (2025)
- [Weakly-supervised Contrastive Learning with Quantity Prompts for Moving Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02454/) (2025)
- [Beyond Motion Cues and Structural Sparsity: Revisiting Small Moving Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07654/) (2025)
- [FSGNet: A Frequency-Aware and Semantic Guidance Network for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.25389/) (2026)
- [CPCANet: Deep Unfolding Common Principal Component Analysis for Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.05136/) (2026)
- [Na-IRSTD: Enhancing Infrared Small Target Detection via Native-Resolution Feature Selection and Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.05804/) (2026)
- [Deformable Feature Alignment and Refinement for Moving Infrared Dim-small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07289/) (2024)
- [Sparse Prior Is Not All You Need: When Differential Directionality Meets Saliency Coherence for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15369/) (2024)
- [Learning Dynamic Local Context Representations for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17401/) (2024)
- [Tuning-Free Structured Sparse PCA via Deep Unfolding Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20837/) (2025)
- [LSP-ST: Ladder Shape-Biased Side-Tuning for Robust Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14481/) (2025)
- [Motion-Enhanced Nonlocal Similarity Implicit Neural Representation for Infrared Dim and Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15665/) (2025)
- [Quaternion-Based Robust PCA for Efficient Moving Target Detection and Background Recovery in Color Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19730/) (2025)
- [SWAN: Synergistic Wavelet-Attention Network for Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01322/) (2025)
- [HyperTea: A Hypergraph-based Temporal Enhancement and Alignment Network for Moving Infrared Small Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10678/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep learning (DL) networks have achieved remarkable performance in infrared small target detection (ISTD). However, these structures exhibit a deficiency in interpretability and are widely regarded as black boxes, as they disregard domain knowledge in ISTD. To alleviate this issue, this work proposes an interpretable deep network for detecting infrared dim targets, dubbed RPCANet. Specifically, our approach formulates the ISTD task as sparse target extraction, low-rank background estimation, and image reconstruction in a relaxed Robust Principle Component Analysis (RPCA) model. By unfolding the iterative optimization updating steps into a deep-learning framework, time-consuming and complex matrix calculations are replaced by theory-guided neural networks. RPCANet detects targets with clear interpretability and preserves the intrinsic image feature, instead of directly transforming the detection task into a matrix decomposition problem. Extensive experiments substantiate the effectiveness of our deep unfolding framework and demonstrate its trustworthy results, surpassing baseline methods in both qualitative and quantitative evaluations.