Relating CNN-Transformer Fusion Network for Remote Sensing Change Detection

Abstract

While deep learning, particularly convolutional neural networks (CNNs), has revolutionized remote sensing (RS) change detection (CD), existing approaches often miss crucial features due to neglecting global context and incomplete change learning. Additionally, transformer networks struggle with low-level details. RCTNet addresses these limitations by introducing (1) an early fusion backbone to exploit both spatial and temporal features early on, (2) a Cross-Stage Aggregation (CSA) module for enhanced temporal representation, (3) a Multi-Scale Feature Fusion (MSF) module for enriched feature extraction in the decoder, and (4) an Efficient Self-deciphering Attention (ESA) module utilizing transformers to capture global information and fine-grained details for accurate change detection. Extensive experiments demonstrate RCTNet’s clear superiority over traditional RS image CD methods, showing significant improvement and an optimal balance between accuracy and computational cost. Our source codes and pre-trained models are available at: https://github.com/NUST-Machine-Intelligence-Laboratory/RCTNet.