STGBD-Net: Spatio-temporal Gradient Basis Decomposition Network for Infrared Small Target Detection

A key challenge in infrared small target detection (IRSTD) is that weak target signal responses are easily obscured by strong background clutter, frequently resulting in missed detections. While traditional gradient-based methods attempt to capture fine details, their robustness is limited by the static fusion of multi-directional gradient features. In this paper, we rethink feature fusion from the perspective of Basis Decomposition Theory and propose a novel framework that reformulates the process into an explicit and adaptive decomposition-and-reconstruction paradigm. Specifically, we introduce the Basis Decomposition Module (BDM) and its specialized variant, the Gradient Decomposition Module (GDM) for IRSTD. GDMs treat the normalized gradient features as basis vectors to reconstruct a new feature, thereby maintaining detailed structures and highlighting infrared small targets. By integrating GDMs into a lightweight three-stage U-Net, we develop two unified architectures: the Spatial Gradient Basis Decomposition Network for single-frame detection and the Spatio-temporal Gradient Basis Decomposition Network for multi-frame scenarios. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our networks achieve state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance across multiple benchmarks, offering a superior balance between detection accuracy and computational efficiency. Our codes will be made public at: https://github.com/greekinRoma/IRSTD_HC_Platform.