Camouflaged Objects Research Articles

Improving underwater camouflage object segmentation with dual-decoder attention network

Improving underwater camouflage object segmentation with dual-decoder attention network

CoFiNet: Unveiling camouflaged objects with multi-scale finesse

Camouflaged Object Detection (COD) is a critical aspect of computer vision aimed at identifying concealed objects, with applications spanning military, industrial, medical and monitoring domains. To address the problem of poor detail segmentation effect, we introduce a novel method for camouflaged object detection, named CoFiNet. Our approach primarily focuses on multi-scale feature fusion and extraction, with special attention to the model’s segmentation effectiveness for detailed features, enhancing its ability to effectively detect camouflaged objects. CoFiNet adopts a coarse-to-fine strategy. A multi-scale feature integration module is laveraged to enhance the model’s capability of fusing context feature. A multi-activation selective kernel module is leveraged to grant the model the ability to autonomously alter its receptive field, enabling it to selectively choose an appropriate receptive field for camouflaged objects of different sizes. During mask generation, we employ the dual-mask strategy for image segmentation, separating the reconstruction of coarse and fine masks, which significantly enhances the model’s learning capacity for details. Comprehensive experiments were conducted on four different datasets, demonstrating that CoFiNet achieves state-of-the-art performance across all datasets. The experiment results of CoFiNet underscore its effectiveness in camouflaged object detection and highlight its potential in various practical application scenarios.

A three-stage model for camouflaged object detection

Camouflaged objects are typically assimilated into their backgrounds and exhibit fuzzy boundaries. The complex environmental conditions and the high intrinsic similarity between camouflaged targets and their surroundings pose significant challenges in accurately locating and segmenting these objects in their entirety. While existing methods have demonstrated remarkable performance in various real-world scenarios, they still face limitations when confronted with difficult cases, such as small targets, thin structures, and indistinct boundaries. Drawing inspiration from human visual perception when observing images containing camouflaged objects, we propose a three-stage model that enables coarse-to-fine segmentation in a single iteration. Specifically, our model employs three decoders to sequentially process subsampled features, cropped features, and high-resolution original features. This proposed approach not only reduces computational overhead but also mitigates interference caused by background noise. Furthermore, considering the significance of multi-scale information, we have designed a multi-scale feature enhancement module that enlarges the receptive field while preserving detailed structural cues. Additionally, a boundary enhancement module has been developed to enhance performance by leveraging boundary information. Subsequently, a mask-guided fusion module is proposed to generate fine-grained results by integrating coarse prediction maps with high-resolution feature maps. Our network shows superior performance without introducing unnecessary complexities. Upon acceptance of the paper, the source code will be made publicly available at https://github.com/clelouch/TSNet.

Improved Yolov7 Tiny with Global Attention Mechanism for Camouflage Object Detection

Improved Yolov7 Tiny with Global Attention Mechanism for Camouflage Object Detection

Feline eye-inspired artificial vision for enhanced camouflage breaking under diverse light conditions.

Biologically inspired artificial vision research has led to innovative robotic vision systems with low optical aberration, wide field of view, and compact form factor. However, challenges persist in object detection and recognition against complex backgrounds and varied lighting. Inspired by the feline eye, which features a vertically elongated pupil and tapetum lucidum, this study introduces an artificial vision system designed for superior object detection and recognition in a monocular framework. Using a slit-like elliptical aperture and a patterned metal reflector beneath a hemispherical silicon photodiode array, the system reduces excessive light and enhances photosensitivity. This design achieves clear focus under bright light and enhanced sensitivity in dim conditions. Theoretical and experimental analyses demonstrate the system's ability to filter redundant information and detect camouflaged objects in diverse lighting, representing a substantial advancement in monocular camera technology and the potential of biomimicry in optical innovations.

Denoising Diffusion Implicit Model for Camouflaged Object Detection

Camouflaged object detection (COD) is a challenging task that involves identifying objects that closely resemble their background. In order to detect camouflaged objects more accurately, we propose a diffusion model for the COD network called DMNet. DMNet formulates COD as a denoising diffusion process from noisy boxes to prediction boxes. During the training stage, random boxes diffuse from ground-truth boxes, and DMNet learns to reverse this process. In the sampling stage, DMNet progressively refines random boxes to prediction boxes. In addition, due to the camouflaged object’s blurred appearance and the low contrast between it and the background, the feature extraction stage of the network is challenging. Firstly, we proposed a parallel fusion module (PFM) to enhance the information extracted from the backbone. Then, we designed a progressive feature pyramid network (PFPN) for feature fusion, in which the upsample adaptive spatial fusion module (UAF) balances the different feature information by assigning weights to different layers. Finally, a location refinement module (LRM) is constructed to make DMNet pay attention to the boundary details. We compared DMNet with other classical object-detection models on the COD10K dataset. Experimental results indicated that DMNet outperformed others, achieving optimal effects across six evaluation metrics and significantly enhancing detection accuracy.

A survey on deep learning-based camouflaged object detection

A survey on deep learning-based camouflaged object detection

Dual cross perception network with texture and boundary guidance for camouflaged object detection

Camouflaged object detection (COD) is a task needs to segment objects that subtly blend into their surroundings effectively. Edge and texture information of the objects can be utilized to reveal the edges of camouflaged objects and detect texture differences between camouflaged objects and the surrounding environment. However, existing methods often fail to fully exploit the advantages of these two types of information. Considering this, our paper proposes an innovative Dual Cross Perception Network (DCPNet) with texture and boundary guidance for camouflaged object detection. DCPNet consists of two essential modules, namely Dual Cross Fusion Module (DCFM) and the Subgroup Aggregation Module (SAM). DCFM utilizes attention techniques to emphasize the information that exists in edges and textures by cross-fusing features of the edge, texture, and basic RGB image, which strengthens the ability to capture edge information and texture details in image analysis. SAM gives varied weights to low-level and high-level features in order to enhance the comprehension of objects and scenes of various sizes. Several experiments have demonstrated that DCPNet outperforms 13 state-of-the-art methods on four widely used assessment metrics.

Green fruit detection methods: Innovative application of camouflage object detection and multilevel feature mining

Accurate detection of object fruits is essential for optimizing picking efficiency and predicting fruit yields. However, detecting early-stage ripening or green fruits, especially in complex fields, poses significant challenge due to their similarity to green leaves. This study introduces the TEAVit model, a novel camouflage object detection network specifically tailored for identifying green tomatoes in intricate agricultural environments. TEAVit incorporates a texture-edge-awareness module (TEAM) to enhance the extraction ability of texture feature by combining high-level and low-level features, an edge-guided feature module (EFM) to address background complexities and occlusions, and a context-aggregation module (CAM) to leverage contextual semantics. Experimental validation results demonstrate that the S-measure, E-measure, and F-measure performance metrics all exceed 90% on the tomato dataset, accompanied by a mean absolute error of 0.0245. These findings underpinned the effectiveness of the proposed green fruit camouflage object detection algorithm in offering new insights for agricultural target localization.

Reverse cross-refinement network for camouflaged object detection

Due to the high intrinsic similarity between camouflaged objects and the background, camouflaged objects often exhibit blurred boundaries, making it challenging to distinguish the boundaries of objects. Existing methods still focus on the overall regional accuracy but not on the boundary quality and are not competent to identify camouflaged objects from the background in complex scenarios. Thus, we propose a novel reverse cross-refinement network called RCR-Net. Specifically, we design a diverse feature enhancement module that simulates the correspondingly expanded receptive fields of the human visual system by using convolutional kernels with different dilation rates in parallel. Also, the boundary attention module is used to reduce the noise of the bottom features. Moreover, a multi-scale feature aggregation module is proposed to transmit the diverse features from pixel-level camouflaged edges to the entire camouflaged object region in a coarse-to-fine manner, which consists of reverse guidance, group guidance, and position guidance. Reverse guidance mines complementary regions and details by erasing already estimated object regions. Group guidance and position guidance integrate different features through simple and effective splitting and connecting operations. Extensive experiments show that RCR-Net outperforms the existing 18 state-of-the-art methods on four widely-used COD datasets. Especially, compared with the existing top-1 model HitNet, RCR-Net significantly improves the performance by ∼16.4% (Mean Absolute Error) on the CAMO dataset, showing that RCR-Net could accurately detect camouflaged objects.

Camouflaged Object Detection via Dual-branch Fusion and Dual Self-similarity constraints

Camouflaged Object Detection (COD) remains a challenging task due to the inherent difficulty in distinguishing concealed objects from their surroundings, primarily owing to their high visual similarity. Current research efforts have been insufficient in distinguishing the similarity differences between camouflaged objects and their corresponding backgrounds, leading to suboptimal performance, particularly when locating small-scale objects. To solve this issue, we introduce a novel Dual-branch Fusion and Dual Self-similarity Network (DSNet) comprising three modules. The first, a dual-branch fusion, mimics human observation of camouflaged objects and extracts multi-angle information. Dual-branch features are then decoded using a symmetric joint decoder module with channel interaction via multi-stage inter-group interaction. Inspired by natural organisms’ self-similarity, the self-similarity constraint module employs global and mutual constraints to identify subtle foreground-background differences. DSNet shows superior performance in experiments, and the constraint module can enhance other models as a plug-and-play component, further boosting overall performance.

Multi-scale contrastive adaptor learning for segmenting anything in underperformed scenes

Foundational vision models, such as the Segment Anything Model (SAM), have achieved significant breakthroughs through extensive pre-training on large-scale visual datasets. Despite their general success, these models may fall short in specialized tasks with limited data, and fine-tuning such large-scale models is often not feasible. Current strategies involve incorporating adaptors into the pre-trained SAM to facilitate downstream task performance with minimal model adjustment. However, these strategies can be hampered by suboptimal learning approaches for the adaptors. In this paper, we introduce a novel Multi-scale Contrastive Adaptor learning method named MCA-SAM, which enhances adaptor performance through a meticulously designed contrastive learning framework at both token and sample levels. Our Token-level Contrastive adaptor (TC-adaptor) focuses on refining local representations by improving the discriminability of patch tokens, while the Sample-level Contrastive adaptor (SC-adaptor) amplifies global understanding across different samples. Together, these adaptors synergistically enhance feature comparison within and across samples, bolstering the model’s representational strength and its ability to adapt to new tasks. Empirical results demonstrate that MCA-SAM sets new benchmarks, outperforming existing methods in three challenging domains: camouflage object detection, shadow segmentation, and polyp segmentation. Specifically, MCA-SAM exhibits substantial relative performance enhancements, achieving a 20.0% improvement in MAE on the COD10K dataset, a 6.0% improvement in MAE on the CAMO dataset, a 15.4% improvement in BER on the ISTD dataset, and a 7.9% improvement in mDice on the Kvasir-SEG dataset.

Camouflaged object segmentation with prior via two-stage training

The camouflaged object segmentation (COS) task aims to segment objects visually embedded within the background. Existing models usually rely on prior information as an auxiliary means to identify camouflaged objects. However, low-quality priors and the singular guidance form hinder the effective utilization of prior information. To address these issues, we propose a novel approach for prior generation and guidance, named prior-guided transformer (PGT). For prior generation, we design a prior generation subnetwork consisting of a Transformer backbone and simple convolutions to obtain higher-quality priors at a lower cost. In addition, to fully exploit the backbone’s understanding capabilities of the camouflage characteristics, a novel two-stage training method is proposed to achieve the backbone’s deep supervision. For prior guidance, we design a prior guidance modules (PGM), with distinct space token mixers to respectively capture global dependencies of location priors and local details of boundary priors. Additionally, we introduce a cross-level prior in the form of features to facilitate inter-level communication of backbone features. Extensive experiments have been conducted and experimental results illustrate the effectiveness and superiority of our method. The code is available at https://github.com/Ray3417/PGT.

AFINet: Camouflaged object detection via Attention Fusion and Interaction Network

Since the camouflaged objects share very similar colors and textures with the surroundings, there is still a great challenge in accurately locating and segmenting target objects with the varying sizes and shapes in different scenes. In this paper, we propose a novel Attention Fusion and Interaction network (AFINet) to detect the camouflaged objects by exploring the cross-level complementary information. Specifically, we first propose a Multi-Attention Interaction (MAI) module to fuse the cross-level features containing different characteristics by the attention interaction, thereby fully making use of the specific and complementary information from different levels to deal with scale variation. Furthermore, we design a Location and Boundary Guidance (LBG) module to make each side-output feature aware of where to learn, which can avoid the disturbances of the non-camouflaged regions by distinguishing the subtle differences. Comprehensive experiments and comparisons are conducted on four widely used benchmark datasets, demonstrating that the proposed network achieves state-of-the-art performance. The code and prediction maps will be available at https://github.com/ZhangQing0329/AFINet.

DAGCN: Dynamic and Adaptive Graph Convolutional Network for Salient Object Detection.

Deep-learning-based salient object detection (SOD) has achieved significant success in recent years. The SOD focuses on the context modeling of the scene information, and how to effectively model the context relationship in the scene is the key. However, it is difficult to build an effective context structure and model it. In this article, we propose a novel SOD method called dynamic and adaptive graph convolutional network (DAGCN) that is composed of two parts, adaptive neighborhood-wise graph convolutional network (AnwGCN) and spatially restricted K-nearest neighbors (SRKNN). The AnwGCN is novel adaptive neighborhood-wise graph convolution, which is used to model and analyze the saliency context. The SRKNN constructs the topological relationship of the saliency context by measuring the non-Euclidean spatial distance within a limited range. The proposed method constructs the context relationship as a topological graph by measuring the distance of the features in the non-Euclidean space, and conducts comparative modeling of context information through AnwGCN. The model has the ability to learn the metrics from features and can adapt to the hidden space distribution of the data. The description of the feature relationship is more accurate. Through the convolutional kernel adapted to the neighborhood, the model obtains the structure learning ability. Therefore, the graph convolution process can adapt to different graph data. Experimental results demonstrate that our solution achieves satisfactory performance on six widely used datasets and can also effectively detect camouflaged objects. Our code will be available at: https://github.com/CSIM-LUT/DAGCN.git.

ATTACK-COSM: attacking the camouflaged object segmentation model through digital world adversarial examples

The camouflaged object segmentation model (COSM) has recently gained substantial attention due to its remarkable ability to detect camouflaged objects. Nevertheless, deep vision models are widely acknowledged to be susceptible to adversarial examples, which can mislead models, causing them to make incorrect predictions through imperceptible perturbations. The vulnerability to adversarial attacks raises significant concerns when deploying COSM in security-sensitive applications. Consequently, it is crucial to determine whether the foundational vision model COSM is also susceptible to such attacks. To our knowledge, our work represents the first exploration of strategies for targeting COSM with adversarial examples in the digital world. With the primary objective of reversing the predictions for both masked objects and backgrounds, we explore the adversarial robustness of COSM in full white-box and black-box settings. In addition to the primary objective of reversing the predictions for masked objects and backgrounds, our investigation reveals the potential to generate any desired mask through adversarial attacks. The experimental results indicate that COSM demonstrates weak robustness, rendering it vulnerable to adversarial example attacks. In the realm of COS, the projected gradient descent (PGD) attack method exhibits superior attack capabilities compared to the fast gradient sign (FGSM) method in both white-box and black-box settings. These findings reduce the security risks in the application of COSM and pave the way for multiple applications of COSM.

CCNet: Collaborative Camouflaged Object Detection via decoder-induced information interaction and supervision refinement network

Recently, research based on the camouflaged object detection (COD) task has achieved great progress, while the collaborative camouflaged object detection (CoCOD) task is still lacking. Our research focuses on the simultaneous detection and localization of the collaborative camouflaged objects, i.e., CoCOD task. We use the cooperative information between a single image and a group of camouflage images to discover cooperative camouflaged objects effectively. In this paper, we propose a collaborative cross-scale feature learning network (CCNet). Our model is characterized by two innovative constructions: We proposed an edge augmentation module (EAM), which effectively extracts edge information of the camouflaged object and integrates it with the collaborative information employed in auxiliary supervision. In addition, we design a group decoder module (GDM) to extract and merge co-camouflage information. Extensive experiments on CoCOD8K datasets demonstrate that our CCNet significantly outperforms the existing 13 state-of-the-art COD and 6 state-of-the-art collaborative salient object detection (CoSOD) methods under six widely used evaluation metrics. The code will be available at: https://github.com/zc199823/CCNet--CoCOD.

Finding Camouflaged Objects Along the Camouflage Mechanisms

Finding Camouflaged Objects Along the Camouflage Mechanisms

Discriminative context-aware network for camouflaged object detection.

Animals use camouflage (background matching, disruptive coloration, etc.) for protection, confusing predators and making detection difficult. Camouflage Object Detection (COD) tackles this challenge by identifying objects seamlessly blended into their surroundings. Existing COD techniques struggle with hidden objects due to noisy inferences inherent in natural environments. To address this, we propose the Discriminative Context-aware Network (DiCANet) for improved COD performance. DiCANet addresses camouflage challenges through a two-stage approach. First, an adaptive restoration block intelligently learns feature weights, prioritizing informative channels and pixels. This enhances convolutional neural networks' ability to represent diverse data and handle complex camouflage. Second, a cascaded detection module with an enlarged receptive field refines the object prediction map, achieving clear boundaries without post-processing. Without post-processing, DiCANet achieves state-of-the-art performance on challenging COD datasets (CAMO, CHAMELEON, COD10K) by generating accurate saliency maps with rich contextual details and precise boundaries. DiCANet tackles the challenge of identifying camouflaged objects in noisy environments with its two-stage restoration and cascaded detection approach. This innovative architecture surpasses existing methods in COD tasks, as proven by benchmark dataset experiments.

CamoDiffusion: Camouflaged Object Detection via Conditional Diffusion Models

Camouflaged Object Detection (COD) is a challenging task in computer vision due to the high similarity between camouflaged objects and their surroundings. Existing COD methods struggle with nuanced object boundaries and overconfident incorrect predictions. In response, we propose a new paradigm that treats COD as a conditional mask-generation task leveraging diffusion models. Our method, dubbed CamoDiffusion, employs the denoising process to progressively refine predictions while incorporating image conditions. Due to the stochastic sampling process of diffusion, our model is capable of sampling multiple possible predictions, avoiding the problem of overconfident point estimation. Moreover, we develop specialized network architecture, training, and sampling strategies, to enhance the model’s expressive power, refinement capabilities and suppress overconfident mis-segmentations, thus aptly tailoring the diffusion model to the demands of COD. Extensive experiments on three COD datasets attest to the superior performance of our model compared to existing state-of-the-art methods, particularly on the most challenging COD10K dataset, where our approach achieves 0.019 in terms of MAE. Codes and models are available at https://github.com/Rapisurazurite/CamoDiffusion.