DA-CapsUNet: A Dual-Attention Capsule U-Net for Road Extraction from Remote Sensing Imagery

The up-to-date and information-accurate road database plays a significant role in many applications. Recently, with the improvement in image resolutions and quality, remote sensing images have provided an important data source for road extraction tasks. However, due to the topology variations, spect...

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Main Authors: Yongfeng Ren, Yongtao Yu, Haiyan Guan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2020-09-01
Series:Remote Sensing
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/12/18/2866
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author Yongfeng Ren
Yongtao Yu
Haiyan Guan
author_facet Yongfeng Ren
Yongtao Yu
Haiyan Guan
author_sort Yongfeng Ren
collection DOAJ
description The up-to-date and information-accurate road database plays a significant role in many applications. Recently, with the improvement in image resolutions and quality, remote sensing images have provided an important data source for road extraction tasks. However, due to the topology variations, spectral diversities, and complex scenarios, it is still challenging to realize fully automated and highly accurate road extractions from remote sensing images. This paper proposes a novel dual-attention capsule U-Net (DA-CapsUNet) for road region extraction by combining the advantageous properties of capsule representations and the powerful features of attention mechanisms. By constructing a capsule U-Net architecture, the DA-CapsUNet can extract and fuse multiscale capsule features to recover a high-resolution and semantically strong feature representation. By designing the multiscale context-augmentation and two types of feature attention modules, the DA-CapsUNet can exploit multiscale contextual properties at a high-resolution perspective and generate an informative and class-specific feature encoding. Quantitative evaluations on a large dataset showed that the DA-CapsUNet provides a competitive road extraction performance with a precision of 0.9523, a recall of 0.9486, and an F-score of 0.9504, respectively. Comparative studies with eight recently developed deep learning methods also confirmed the applicability and superiority or compatibility of the DA-CapsUNet in road extraction tasks.
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spelling doaj.art-9024dbf3504c495fa6fa72893bb9ef042023-11-20T12:32:58ZengMDPI AGRemote Sensing2072-42922020-09-011218286610.3390/rs12182866DA-CapsUNet: A Dual-Attention Capsule U-Net for Road Extraction from Remote Sensing ImageryYongfeng Ren0Yongtao Yu1Haiyan Guan2School of Energy and Power Engineering, Nanjing Institute of Technology, Nanjing 211167, ChinaFaculty of Computer and Software Engineering, Huaiyin Institute of Technology, Huaian 223003, ChinaSchool of Remote Sensing and Geomatics Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, ChinaThe up-to-date and information-accurate road database plays a significant role in many applications. Recently, with the improvement in image resolutions and quality, remote sensing images have provided an important data source for road extraction tasks. However, due to the topology variations, spectral diversities, and complex scenarios, it is still challenging to realize fully automated and highly accurate road extractions from remote sensing images. This paper proposes a novel dual-attention capsule U-Net (DA-CapsUNet) for road region extraction by combining the advantageous properties of capsule representations and the powerful features of attention mechanisms. By constructing a capsule U-Net architecture, the DA-CapsUNet can extract and fuse multiscale capsule features to recover a high-resolution and semantically strong feature representation. By designing the multiscale context-augmentation and two types of feature attention modules, the DA-CapsUNet can exploit multiscale contextual properties at a high-resolution perspective and generate an informative and class-specific feature encoding. Quantitative evaluations on a large dataset showed that the DA-CapsUNet provides a competitive road extraction performance with a precision of 0.9523, a recall of 0.9486, and an F-score of 0.9504, respectively. Comparative studies with eight recently developed deep learning methods also confirmed the applicability and superiority or compatibility of the DA-CapsUNet in road extraction tasks.https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/12/18/2866road extractioncapsule networkcapsule U-Netcapsule attention networkremote sensing imagerydeep learning
spellingShingle Yongfeng Ren
Yongtao Yu
Haiyan Guan
DA-CapsUNet: A Dual-Attention Capsule U-Net for Road Extraction from Remote Sensing Imagery
Remote Sensing
road extraction
capsule network
capsule U-Net
capsule attention network
remote sensing imagery
deep learning
title DA-CapsUNet: A Dual-Attention Capsule U-Net for Road Extraction from Remote Sensing Imagery
title_full DA-CapsUNet: A Dual-Attention Capsule U-Net for Road Extraction from Remote Sensing Imagery
title_fullStr DA-CapsUNet: A Dual-Attention Capsule U-Net for Road Extraction from Remote Sensing Imagery
title_full_unstemmed DA-CapsUNet: A Dual-Attention Capsule U-Net for Road Extraction from Remote Sensing Imagery
title_short DA-CapsUNet: A Dual-Attention Capsule U-Net for Road Extraction from Remote Sensing Imagery
title_sort da capsunet a dual attention capsule u net for road extraction from remote sensing imagery
topic road extraction
capsule network
capsule U-Net
capsule attention network
remote sensing imagery
deep learning
url https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/12/18/2866
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AT yongtaoyu dacapsunetadualattentioncapsuleunetforroadextractionfromremotesensingimagery
AT haiyanguan dacapsunetadualattentioncapsuleunetforroadextractionfromremotesensingimagery