HE-YOLO: Aerial Target Detection Based On Improved YOLOv3

Abstract

Aerial image-based target detection has problems such as low accuracy in multiscale target detection situations, slow detection speed, missed targets and falsely detected targets. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a detection algorithm based on the improved You Only Look Once (YOLO)v3 network architecture from the perspective of model efficiency and applies it to multiscale image-based target detection. First, the K-means clustering algorithm is used to cluster an aerial dataset and optimize the anchor frame parameters of the network to improve the effectiveness of target detection. Second, the feature extraction method of the algorithm is improved, and a feature fusion method is used to establish a multiscale (large-, medium-, and small-scale) prediction layer, which mitigates the problem of small target information loss in deep networks and improves the detection accuracy of the algorithm. Finally, label regularization processing is performed on the predicted value, the generalized intersection over union (GIoU) is used as the bounding box regression loss function, and the focal loss function is integrated into the bounding box confidence loss function, which not only improves the target detection accuracy but also effectively reduces the false detection rate and missed target rate of the algorithm. An experimental comparison on the RSOD and NWPU VHR-10 aerial datasets shows that the detection effect of high-efficiency YOLO (HE-YOLO) is significantly improved compared with that of YOLOv3, and the average detection accuracies are increased by 8.92% and 7.79% on the two datasets, respectively. The algorithm not only shows better detection performance for multiscale targets but also reduces the missed target rate and false detection rate and has good robustness and generalizability.