Semantic segmentation of satellite images of airports using convolutional neural networks

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the development of an effective semantic segmentation algorithm for automation of airport infrastructure labelling in RGB satellite images. This task is addressed using algorithms based on deep convolutional artificial neural networks, as they have proven themselves in a wide range of tasks, including the terrestrial imagery segmentation, where they show consistently high results. A new dataset was labelled for this particular task and a comparative analysis of different architectures and backbones was carried out. A conditional random field model (CRF) was used for postprocessing and accounting of contextual information and neighborhood of objects of different classes in order to eliminate outliers. Features of the solutions applied at all preparatory stages of the algorithm were described, including data preparation, neural network training and post-processing of the training results.

Keywords

• semantic segmentation
• artificial neural networks
• deep learning
• image processing