U-Net Ensemble for Enhanced Semantic Segmentation in Remote Sensing Imagery

Abstract

Semantic segmentation of remote sensing imagery stands as a fundamental task within the domains of both remote sensing and computer vision. Its objective is to generate a comprehensive pixel-wise segmentation map of an image, assigning a specific label to each pixel. This facilitates in-depth analysis and comprehension of the Earth’s surface. In this paper, we propose an approach for enhancing semantic segmentation performance by employing an ensemble of U-Net models with three different backbone networks: Multi-Axis Vision Transformer, ConvFormer, and EfficientNet. The final segmentation maps are generated through a geometric mean ensemble method, leveraging the diverse representations learned by each backbone network. The effectiveness of the base U-Net models and the proposed ensemble is evaluated on multiple datasets commonly used for semantic segmentation tasks in remote sensing imagery, including LandCover.ai, LoveDA, INRIA, UAVid, and ISPRS Potsdam datasets. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves state-of-the-art performance, showcasing its effectiveness and robustness in accurately capturing the semantic information embedded within remote sensing images.

Keywords

• remote sensing imagery
• U-Net
• ensemble learning
• semantic segmentation
• land cover