# Rethinking Scanning Strategies with Vision Mamba in Semantic Segmentation of Remote Sensing Imagery: An Experimental Study

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.08493 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.08493/

## Key facts

- Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Point clouds, detection and remote sensing, one of 10 directions in State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba).
- Builds on 31 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 May 2024.

## Placed in

- State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba) / [Point clouds, detection and remote sensing](https://mlsanity.com/ssm/point-clouds-detection-and-remote-sensing/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00752/) (2023)
- [The Cityscapes Dataset for Semantic Urban Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01685/) (2016)
- [A ConvNet for the 2020s](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03545/) (2022)
- [Efficiently Modeling Long Sequences with Structured State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00396/) (2021)
- [Unified Perceptual Parsing for Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10221/) (2018)
- [Vision Mamba: Efficient Visual Representation Learning with Bidirectional State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09417/) (2024)
- [Transformers in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01169/) (2021)
- [VMamba: Visual State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10166/) (2024)
- [COCO-Stuff: Thing and Stuff Classes in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03716/) (2016)
- [RWKV: Reinventing RNNs for the Transformer Era](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13048/) (2023)
- [HiPPO: Recurrent Memory with Optimal Polynomial Projections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.07669/) (2020)
- [RefineNet: Multi-Path Refinement Networks for High-Resolution Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.06612/) (2016)
- [U-Mamba: Enhancing Long-range Dependency for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04722/) (2024)
- [Resurrecting Recurrent Neural Networks for Long Sequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06349/) (2023)
- [VM-UNet: Vision Mamba UNet for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02491/) (2024)
- [SegMamba: Long-range Sequential Modeling Mamba For 3D Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.13560/) (2024)
- [LoveDA: A Remote Sensing Land-Cover Dataset for Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08733/) (2021)
- [PlainMamba: Improving Non-Hierarchical Mamba in Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17695/) (2024)
- [RS-Mamba for Large Remote Sensing Image Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02668/) (2024)
- [Mamba-360: Survey of State Space Models as Transformer Alternative for Long Sequence Modelling: Methods, Applications, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16112/) (2024)
- [State Space Model for New-Generation Network Alternative to Transformers: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09516/) (2024)
- [Vivim: a Video Vision Mamba for Medical Video Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14168/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Visual Mamba](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15956/) (2024)
- [nnMamba: 3D Biomedical Image Segmentation, Classification and Landmark Detection with State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03526/) (2024)
- [Samba: Semantic Segmentation of Remotely Sensed Images with State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01705/) (2024)
- [RS3Mamba: Visual State Space Model for Remote Sensing Images Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02457/) (2024)
- [Weak-Mamba-UNet: Visual Mamba Makes CNN and ViT Work Better for Scribble-based Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10887/) (2024)
- [Advancements in Point Cloud Data Augmentation for Deep Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12113/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Mamba in Vision: A Comprehensive Survey of Techniques and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03105/) (2024)
- [DriveMamba: Task-Centric Scalable State Space Model for Efficient End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13301/) (2026)
- [Vim-F: Visual State Space Model Benefiting from Learning in the Frequency Domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18679/) (2024)
- [MambaMIM: Pre-training Mamba with State Space Token Interpolation and its Application to Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08070/) (2024)
- [Vision Mamba in Remote Sensing: A Comprehensive Survey of Techniques, Applications and Outlook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.00630/) (2025)
- [Seg-LSTM: Performance of xLSTM for Semantic Segmentation of Remotely Sensed Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14086/) (2024)
- [SaMam: Style-aware State Space Model for Arbitrary Image Style Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15934/) (2025)
- [Merging Context Clustering with Visual State Space Models for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.01618/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Environmental Monitoring through Multispectral Imaging: The WasteMS Dataset for Semantic Segmentation of Lakeside Waste](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17028/) (2024)
- [Alignment-free Raw Video Demoireing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.10679/) (2024)
- [Flatten Wisely: How Patch Order Shapes Mamba-Powered Vision for MRI Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13384/) (2025)
- [Preserving Full Degradation Details for Blind Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01299/) (2024)
- [Selecting and Pruning: A Differentiable Causal Sequentialized State-Space Model for Two-View Correspondence Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17938/) (2025)
- [ClassWise-CRF: Category-Specific Fusion for Enhanced Semantic Segmentation of Remote Sensing Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.21491/) (2025)
- [Domain adaptation of large language models for geotechnical applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05613/) (2025)
- [PathMamba: A Hybrid Mamba-Transformer for Topologically Coherent Road Segmentation in Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21298/) (2025)
- [OCTOPUS: Enhancing the Spatial-Awareness of Vision SSMs with Multi-Dimensional Scans and Traversal Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00904/) (2026)
- [Partial Ring Scan: Revisiting Scan Order in Vision State Space Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04170/) (2026)
- [MSCrackMamba: Leveraging Vision Mamba for Crack Detection in Fused Multispectral Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06211/) (2024)
- [From Image- to Pixel-level: Label-efficient Hyperspectral Image Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06852/) (2025)
- [HSNet: Heterogeneous Subgraph Network for Single Image Super-resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06564/) (2025)
- [A generalised pre-training strategy for deep learning networks in semantic segmentation of remotely sensed images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27704/) (2026)
- [State Space Models Meet Remote Sensing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.25329/) (2026)
- [Dual-Branch State-Displacement Network for Sea Surface Temperature Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15423/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep learning methods, especially Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Vision Transformer (ViT), are frequently employed to perform semantic segmentation of high-resolution remotely sensed images. However, CNNs are constrained by their restricted receptive fields, while ViTs face challenges due to their quadratic complexity. Recently, the Mamba model, featuring linear complexity and a global receptive field, has gained extensive attention for vision tasks. In such tasks, images need to be serialized to form sequences compatible with the Mamba model. Numerous research efforts have explored scanning strategies to serialize images, aiming to enhance the Mamba model's understanding of images. However, the effectiveness of these scanning strategies remains uncertain. In this research, we conduct a comprehensive experimental investigation on the impact of mainstream scanning directions and their combinations on semantic segmentation of remotely sensed images. Through extensive experiments on the LoveDA, ISPRS Potsdam, and ISPRS Vaihingen datasets, we demonstrate that no single scanning strategy outperforms others, regardless of their complexity or the number of scanning directions involved. A simple, single scanning direction is deemed sufficient for semantic segmentation of high-resolution remotely sensed images. Relevant directions for future research are also recommended.