# Reliable Detection of Minute Targets in High-Resolution Aerial Imagery across Temporal Shifts

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.11360 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11360/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [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)
- [Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1311.2524/) (2013)
- [EfficientDet: Scalable and Efficient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09070/) (2019)
- [Deep Learning for Generic Object Detection: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02165/) (2018)
- [Deep learning in agriculture: A survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.11809/) (2018)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Efficient crop detection via Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is critical for scaling precision agriculture, yet it remains challenging due to the small scale of targets and environmental variability. This paper addresses the detection of rice seedlings in paddy fields by leveraging a Faster R-CNN architecture initialized via transfer learning. To overcome the specific difficulties of detecting minute objects in high-resolution aerial imagery, we curate a significant UAV dataset for training and rigorously evaluate the model's generalization capabilities. Specifically, we validate performance across three distinct test sets acquired at different temporal intervals, thereby assessing robustness against varying imaging conditions. Our empirical results demonstrate that transfer learning not only facilitates the rapid convergence of object detection models in agricultural contexts but also yields consistent performance despite domain shifts in image acquisition.