# Exchange Is All You Need for Remote Sensing Change Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07805 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.07805/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 74 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [Encoder-Decoder with Atrous Separable Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02611/) (2018)
- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [Transformers are SSMs: Generalized Models and Efficient Algorithms Through Structured State Space Duality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.21060/) (2024)
- [Unified Perceptual Parsing for Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10221/) (2018)
- [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)
- [UNetFormer: A UNet-like Transformer for Efficient Semantic Segmentation of Remote Sensing Urban Scene Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.08937/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Multi-Attention-Network for Semantic Segmentation of Fine Resolution Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.02130/) (2020)
- [CDMamba: Incorporating Local Clues into Mamba for Remote Sensing Image Binary Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04207/) (2024)
- [HANet: A Hierarchical Attention Network for Change Detection With Bitemporal Very-High-Resolution Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09178/) (2024)
- [Change Guiding Network: Incorporating Change Prior to Guide Change Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09179/) (2024)
- [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)
- [Adjacent-Level Feature Cross-Fusion With 3-D CNN for Remote Sensing Image Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05109/) (2023)
- [RSBuilding: Towards General Remote Sensing Image Building Extraction and Change Detection with Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07564/) (2024)
- [Adaptive Frequency Enhancement Network for Remote Sensing Image Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02647/) (2025)
- [EfficientCD: A New Strategy For Change Detection Based With Bi-temporal Layers Exchanged](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15999/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Remote sensing change detection fundamentally relies on the effective fusion and discrimination of bi-temporal features. Prevailing paradigms typically utilize Siamese encoders bridged by explicit difference computation modules, such as subtraction or concatenation, to identify changes. In this work, we challenge this complexity with SEED (Siamese Encoder-Exchange-Decoder), a streamlined paradigm that replaces explicit differencing with parameter-free feature exchange. By sharing weights across both Siamese encoders and decoders, SEED effectively operates as a single parameter set model. Theoretically, we formalize feature exchange as an orthogonal permutation operator and prove that, under pixel consistency, this mechanism preserves mutual information and Bayes optimal risk, whereas common arithmetic fusion methods often introduce information loss. Extensive experiments across five benchmarks, including SYSU-CD, LEVIR-CD, PX-CLCD, WaterCD, and CDD, and three backbones, namely SwinT, EfficientNet, and ResNet, demonstrate that SEED matches or surpasses state of the art methods despite its simplicity. Furthermore, we reveal that standard semantic segmentation models can be transformed into competitive change detectors solely by inserting this exchange mechanism, referred to as SEG2CD. The proposed paradigm offers a robust, unified, and interpretable framework for change detection, demonstrating that simple feature exchange is sufficient for high performance information fusion. Code and full training and evaluation protocols will be released at https://github.com/dyzy41/open-rscd.