# Remote SAMsing: From Segment Anything to Segment Everything

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.00256 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00256/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 22 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07258/) (2021)
- [Panoptic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.00868/) (2018)
- [Hiera: A Hierarchical Vision Transformer without the Bells-and-Whistles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00989/) (2023)
- [Boundary IoU: Improving Object-Centric Image Segmentation Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16562/) (2021)
- [EfficientSAM: Leveraged Masked Image Pretraining for Efficient Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00863/) (2023)
- [RSPrompter: Learning to Prompt for Remote Sensing Instance Segmentation based on Visual Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16269/) (2023)
- [Deep learning in remote sensing: a review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.03959/) (2017)
- [Slicing Aided Hyper Inference and Fine-tuning for Small Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06934/) (2022)
- [The Segment Anything Model (SAM) for Remote Sensing Applications: From Zero to One Shot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16623/) (2023)
- [Multi-Attention-Network for Semantic Segmentation of Fine Resolution Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.02130/) (2020)
- [Adapting Segment Anything Model for Change Detection in HR Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01429/) (2023)
- [Superpixels: An Evaluation of the State-of-the-Art](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01601/) (2016)
- [Segment anything, from space?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13000/) (2023)
- [SAM-Assisted Remote Sensing Imagery Semantic Segmentation with Object and Boundary Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02464/) (2023)
- [Tiling and Stitching Segmentation Output for Remote Sensing: Basic Challenges and Recommendations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.12219/) (2018)
- [PointSAM: Pointly-Supervised Segment Anything Model for Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.13401/) (2024)
- [SAMRefiner: Taming Segment Anything Model for Universal Mask Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06756/) (2025)
- [Panoptic Segmentation Meets Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12126/) (2021)
- [SAM2 for Image and Video Segmentation: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12781/) (2025)
- [Superpixel Anything: A general object-based framework for accurate yet regular superpixel segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.12791/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [iSAGE: A Human-in-the-Loop Framework for Remote Sensing Semantic Segmentation via Sparse Point Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10136/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

SAM2 produces high-quality zero-shot segmentation on natural images, but applying it to large remote sensing scenes exposes two problems: (1) its mask generator faces an inherent quality-coverage trade-off: strict thresholds yield precise masks but leave most of the image unsegmented, while relaxed thresholds increase coverage at the cost of mask quality; and (2) large images must be tiled, fragmenting objects across tile boundaries. We propose Remote SAMsing, an open-source pipeline that solves both problems without modifying SAM2 or requiring training data. For coverage, a multi-pass algorithm runs SAM2 repeatedly on each tile, painting accepted masks black between passes to simplify the scene for the next iteration, and relaxing quality thresholds only when coverage gains stagnate, ensuring that the most precise masks are always captured first. For spatial consistency, contextual padding and a parameter-free best-match merge reconstruct objects fragmented across tile boundaries. Evaluated on seven scenes (5~cm to 4.78~m GSD), the pipeline raises coverage from 30--68% (single-pass SAM2) to 91--98%. Ablation experiments quantify the contribution of each component to coverage and detection quality. Per-class evaluation shows that SAM2 transfers well to discrete RS objects (buildings 95%, cars 82--93% Det@0.5) with segment boundaries 3--8× more precise than SLIC and Felzenszwalb baselines. Tile size functions as an implicit scale parameter: reducing it from 1,000 to 250 raises Det@0.5 from 56% to 85%, outperforming SAM2's built-in multi-scale mechanism. The pipeline generalizes to MNF false-color imagery without retraining (99.5% ASA) and scales to production-sized images: a 1.94 billion pixel Potsdam mosaic achieved 97% coverage without quality degradation.