Enhancing Lightweight Remote Sensing Semantic Segmentation via Weak Consistency Regularization

Zirong Chen, Shunxin Xiao, Wang Man, Da-Han Wang, Yifan He, Shunzhi Zhu

Abstract: Remote sensing image semantic segmentation has widespread applications in urban planning and land monitoring. In recent years, U-Net and its variant networks have almost dominated the research in the field of semantic segmentation. However, many models pay less attention to computational efficiency, rendering them ineffective in scenarios with computational resource and timeliness constraints, such as autonomous driving and disaster monitoring. To address this issue, we propose the USA-Net (UNet-like with Shifted Axial), a lightweight hybrid model based on convolution and MLP (Multi-Layer Perceptron). Specifically, we design the ST Block (Shift Tokenized Block), which introduces local features into global operations in MLP through spatial shift, and then use ELCM (Efficient Large-kernel Convolution Module) to enlarge the model’s receptive field and learn the shape features of objects. Additionally, we propose a new semi-supervised learning framework to further improve the model’s generalization performance. On the ISPRS Vaihingen and ISPRS Potsdam datasets, USA-Net significantly outperforms most state-of-the-art methods in terms of segmentation accuracy and efficiency.