# PeftCD: Leveraging Vision Foundation Models with Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Remote Sensing Change Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09572 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.09572/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 26 of its 88 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [Parameter-Efficient Transfer Learning for NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00751/) (2019)
- [SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00714/) (2024)
- [DINOv3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10104/) (2025)
- [iBOT: Image BERT Pre-Training with Online Tokenizer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.07832/) (2021)
- [Remote Sensing Image Change Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00208/) (2021)
- [A Transformer-Based Siamese Network for Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01293/) (2022)
- [ChangeMamba: Remote Sensing Change Detection With Spatiotemporal State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03425/) (2024)
- [RS-Mamba for Large Remote Sensing Image Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02668/) (2024)
- [Changer: Feature Interaction is What You Need for Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.08290/) (2022)
- [S2Looking: A Satellite Side-Looking Dataset for Building Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.09244/) (2021)
- [Adapting Segment Anything Model for Change Detection in HR Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01429/) (2023)
- [CDMamba: Incorporating Local Clues into Mamba for Remote Sensing Image Binary Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04207/) (2024)
- [Change Guiding Network: Incorporating Change Prior to Guide Change Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09179/) (2024)
- [FCCDN: Feature Constraint Network for VHR Image Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10860/) (2021)
- [Remote Sensing Change Detection With Transformers Trained from Scratch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06710/) (2023)
- [Exchanging Dual Encoder-Decoder: A New Strategy for Change Detection with Semantic Guidance and Spatial Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11302/) (2023)
- [ELGC-Net: Efficient Local-Global Context Aggregation for Remote Sensing Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17909/) (2024)
- [HCGMNET: A Hierarchical Change Guiding Map Network For Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.10420/) (2023)
- [Adapting Vision Transformer for Efficient Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04869/) (2023)
- [EfficientCD: A New Strategy For Change Detection Based With Bi-temporal Layers Exchanged](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15999/) (2024)

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

- [TaCo: Capturing Spatio-Temporal Semantic Consistency in Remote Sensing Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20306/) (2025)
- [AVION: Aerial Vision-Language Instruction from Offline Teacher to Prompt-Tuned Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12659/) (2026)
- [Prior-guided Fusion of Multimodal Features for Change Detection from Optical-SAR Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05527/) (2026)
- [Multimodal Foundation Models Adaptation based on Domain-Aware Relaxed Orthogonal Subspace for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.13654/) (2026)
- [Temporally Ordered Region-Token Mamba with Logit-Space Diffusion for Remote Sensing Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.27149/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

To tackle the prevalence of pseudo changes, the scarcity of labeled samples, and the difficulty of cross-domain generalization in multi-temporal and multi-source remote sensing imagery, we propose PeftCD, a change detection framework built upon Vision Foundation Models (VFMs) with Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT). At its core, PeftCD employs a weight-sharing Siamese encoder derived from a VFM, into which LoRA and Adapter modules are seamlessly integrated. This design enables highly efficient task adaptation by training only a minimal set of additional parameters. To fully unlock the potential of VFMs, we investigate two leading backbones: the Segment Anything Model v2 (SAM2), renowned for its strong segmentation priors, and DINOv3, a state-of-the-art self-supervised representation learner. The framework is complemented by a deliberately lightweight decoder, ensuring the focus remains on the powerful feature representations from the backbones. Extensive experiments demonstrate that PeftCD achieves state-of-the-art performance across multiple public datasets, including SYSU-CD (IoU 73.81%), WHUCD (92.05%), MSRSCD (64.07%), MLCD (76.89%), CDD (97.01%), S2Looking (52.25%) and LEVIR-CD (85.62%), with notably precise boundary delineation and strong suppression of pseudo-changes. In summary, PeftCD presents an optimal balance of accuracy, efficiency, and generalization. It offers a powerful and scalable paradigm for adapting large-scale VFMs to real-world remote sensing change detection applications. The code and pretrained models will be released at https://github.com/dyzy41/PeftCD.