# Foundation Model-Driven Semantic Change Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.13780 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13780/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Feb 2026.

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

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [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)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [Understanding Contrastive Representation Learning through Alignment and Uniformity on the Hypersphere](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.10242/) (2020)
- [VMamba: Visual State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10166/) (2024)
- [Vision Transformer Adapter for Dense Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.08534/) (2022)
- [SatMAE: Pre-training Transformers for Temporal and Multi-Spectral Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08051/) (2022)
- [Scale-MAE: A Scale-Aware Masked Autoencoder for Multiscale Geospatial Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.14532/) (2022)
- [Fully Convolutional Siamese Networks for Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.08462/) (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)
- [Seasonal Contrast: Unsupervised Pre-Training from Uncurated Remote Sensing Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16607/) (2021)
- [SkySense: A Multi-Modal Remote Sensing Foundation Model Towards Universal Interpretation for Earth Observation Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10115/) (2023)
- [A Billion-scale Foundation Model for Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05215/) (2023)
- [Bi-Temporal Semantic Reasoning for the Semantic Change Detection in HR Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06103/) (2021)
- [Joint Spatio-Temporal Modeling for the Semantic Change Detection in Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05245/) (2022)
- [Change Detection Methods for Remote Sensing in the Last Decade: A Comprehensive Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05813/) (2023)
- [Hi-UCD: A Large-scale Dataset for Urban Semantic Change Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03247/) (2020)
- [Semantic-CD: Remote Sensing Image Semantic Change Detection towards Open-vocabulary Setting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06808/) (2025)
- [Be the Change You Want to See: Revisiting Remote Sensing Change Detection Practices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.03367/) (2025)
- [Semantic Change Detection with Hypermaps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.07513/) (2016)
- [Semantic Change Detection of Roads and Bridges: A Fine-grained Dataset and Multimodal Frequency-driven Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13212/) (2025)
- [A Contrastive Learning Foundation Model Based on Perfectly Aligned Sample Pairs for Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19447/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [SemDINO: Foundation Prior-Guided Cross-Temporal Semantic Alignment Network for Remote Sensing Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09772/) (2026)
- [Spatially Selective Self-Training for Unsupervised Building Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10775/) (2026)
- [Selective Tool Use for Agentic Change Visual Question Answering in Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.14523/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Remote sensing (RS) change detection is essential for interpreting surface dynamics. Semantic change detection (SCD) further enables pixel-level understanding of multi-class transitions, yet remains sensitive to pseudo-changes induced by imaging conditions. Recent RS foundation models extract semantically consistent features across temporal and environmental variations, which is critical for mitigating pseudo-changes. However, existing SCD methods are often rigid and backbone-specific, lacking the flexibility to integrate diverse multi-scale features from emerging foundation models. To this end, we introduce a modular Cascaded Gated Decoder (CG-Decoder) that bridges various backbones and SCD tasks, processing multi-scale features in a coarse-to-fine manner while enabling adaptive change extraction. Building upon the RS foundation model PerA, we present PerASCD, a unified SCD framework. We further propose a Soft Semantic Consistency Loss (SSCLoss) to mitigate numerical instability in mixed-precision training. Extensive experiments on SECOND and LandsatSCD show that PerASCD achieves new state-of-the-art Sek scores (26.11% and 65.21%), surpassing the previous best by 0.61% and 4.95%, respectively. It also demonstrates exceptional data efficiency (outperforming the full-data baseline with 50% data), seamless cross-backbone generalization, and enhanced interpretability. Our approach maintains robust semantic consistency under radiometric variations, providing a reliable SCD solution. Code: https://github.com/SathShen/PerASCD.git.