journal article·2026-01-31Open access

OA-YOLOv8: A Multiscale Feature Optimization Network for Remote Sensing Object Detection

Jiahao Shi, Jian Liu, Jianqiang Zhang, Lei Zhang, Sihang Sun

Applied Sciences· Volume 16· Issue 3

Abstract

Object recognition in remote sensing images is essential for applications such as land resource monitoring, maritime vessel detection, and emergency disaster assessment. However, detection accuracy is often limited by complex backgrounds, densely distributed targets, and multiscale variations. To address these challenges, this study aims to improve the detection of small-scale and densely distributed objects in complex remote sensing scenes. An improved object detection network is proposed, called omnidirectional and adaptive YOLOv8 (OA-YOLOv8), based on the YOLOv8 architecture. Two targeted enhancements are introduced. First, an omnidirectional perception refinement (OPR) network is embedded into the backbone to strengthen multiscale feature representation through the incorporation of receptive-field convolution with a triplet attention mechanism. Second, an adaptive channel dynamic upsampling (ACDU) module is designed by combining DySample, the Haar wavelet transform, and a self-supervised equivariant attention mechanism (SEAM) to dynamically optimize channel information and preserve fine-grained features during upsampling. Experiments on the satellite imagery multi-vehicle dataset (SIMD) demonstrate that OA-YOLOv8 outperforms the original YOLOv8 by 4.6%, 6.7%, and 4.1% in terms of mAP@0.5, precision, and recall, respectively. Visualization results further confirm its superior performance in detecting small and dense targets, indicating strong potential for practical remote sensing applications.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Advanced Neural Network Applications · Remote-Sensing Image Classification · Advanced Image and Video Retrieval Techniques

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Naval University of Engineering, Wuhan 430030, China

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