Convolutional Block Attention Module

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4 papers in the last four weeks, against 1 the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

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Latest papers 25

Sep 23, 2026cs.CV

TEEP-RCNN: Texture-Enhanced Edge-aware Perception for Steel Surface Defect Detection via Improved Convolutional Block Attention in Faster R-CNN

Steel surface defect detection is critical for automated industrial quality control but remains challenging due to subtle inter-class texture differences and pronounced class imbalance. We introduce TEEP-RCNN (Texture-Enhanced Edge-aware Perception Region-based CNN), a two-stage detector built on Faster R-CNN with a Feature Pyramid Network backbone and an improved Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM). Our CBAM adds dropout regularization in the channel attention MLP and batch normalization on the spatial attention branch, reducing co-adaptation and stabilizing gating logits. Training uses a differential learning rate protocol with cosine annealing warm-up, separating update rates for the pre-trained ResNet-101 backbone and the detection head. At inference, predictions are refined via Test-Time Augmentation fused with Weighted Box Fusion (WBF), improving localization stability on elongated and boundary-adjacent defects. On the NEU-DET benchmark across six defect categories, TEEP-RCNN achieves 73.3% mAP@50 and 37.9% mAP@50-95 in only 10 training epochs on a single GPU, competitive with YOLOv11m (76.2% mAP@50, 100 epochs) while outperforming it on the rolled-in-scale category under the COCO metric. Per-class analysis shows the spatial attention branch is most effective on elongated texture defects such as patches and scratches, while crazing remains an open challenge across both paradigms due to its distributed non-local texture structure.

Kirtan Rajesh

Independent Researcher

Defect Detection Convolutional Block Attention Module Edge-Aware

Sep 14, 2026cs.LG

CRFCAN: A Complex-Valued Cross-Domain Residual Network for Joint Channel and Phase Noise Estimation in Sub-THz OFDM Systems

In sub-terahertz (sub-THz) communications, the coupling of ultra-wide bandwidth and severe phase noise (PN) impairments renders conventional joint channel and PN estimation highly complex and computationally prohibitive. To address this, we propose CRFCAN, a complex-valued residual FFT convolutional attention network designed for joint channel and PN estimation. Unlike existing deep learning schemes that rely on cascaded networks or hybrid frameworks combining neural networks with conventional iterative estimators, CRFCAN performs joint recovery in a truly end-to-end fashion through a physics-inspired cross-domain structure. Specifically, Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and inverse FFT modules are embedded within residual groups to enable iterative feature interaction across the time and frequency domains, thereby capturing both frequency-selective fading and time-varying phase distortions. In addition, two dedicated residual blocks are introduced for complex feature extraction and multiplicative phase-distortion modeling, respectively. A physics-aware PN output tail with soft normalization is further employed to improve estimation stability while preserving the physical characteristics of the effective PN process. Simulation results demonstrate that CRFCAN significantly outperforms conventional algorithms and state-of-the-art deep learning models in terms of normalized mean square error (NMSE) and bit error rate (BER). Notably, CRFCAN achieves superior performance with single-shot, fixed-complexity inference and generalizes well to unseen PN models without fine-tuning, highlighting its robustness and practicality for sub-THz receivers.

Ruilin Wang, Xiaodai Dong

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC V8P 5C2, Canada

Channel Estimation Fourier Residual Networks Channel Convolutional Block Attention Module

Sep 9, 2026cs.CV

Enhanced Deformable Convolution with Center-invariant Offset and Edge-aware Mask

Deformable convolution networks have recently become popular for many computer vision tasks, especially for semantic segmentation, because of their exceptional capabilities in dynamic spatial modeling. However, due to the dense deformable offsets and the lack of longer-range dependencies, they can not fully adopt proper and precise deformations for feature representations. To tackle the issues, in this paper, we propose Enhanced Deformable ConvNets (EDCN) for semantic segmentation. Specifically, a novel Enhanced Deformable Convolution (EDC) is exploited in the decoder, which integrates the Center-invariant Offset Module (COM) and Edge-aware Mask Module (EMM). The COM employs larger kernels and eliminates deformations at the kernel center, obtaining offsets that are more in line with the target from richer spatial information. Concurrently, the EMM obtains the significance of image content via Sobel edge detection, then selectively applies deformations based on the content significance, minimizing unnecessary deformations associated with relatively less important information, thereby avoiding impact from less informative regions. Experiments show that EDC outperforms state-of-the-art deformable convolution variants, including Deformable ConvNets V1-V4 and Entire Deformable ConvNets, across mainstream segmentation datasets with various decoder settings. Moreover, ablation studies confirm the effectiveness of each component. In addition, visualizations illustrate that EDC enhances spatial adaptation and target focus. We further analyze the extendibility of EDC to larger kernels on the image classification benchmark. Code will be publicly released.

Yixiao Li, Xiaoyuan Yang, Jin Jiang +5

School of Mathematical Sciences, Beihang University, Beijing, China · Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, Shanghai Radio Equipment Research Institute, Shanghai, China · School of Computational and Mathematical Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom +3

Convolutional Block Attention Module Deformable Cnn Semantic Segmentation

Aug 31, 2026hep-ex

ConCA: Concentration-Aware Channel Attention for Fine-Grained Visual Recognition

Lightweight channel attention mechanisms are widely used in image classification, yet their effectiveness in fine-grained visual recognition (FGVR) remains limited. Most modules summarize each channel by global average pooling (GAP), which captures activation magnitude but ignores spatial concentration, so channels with different spatial distributions but identical means receive the same descriptor. We propose Concentration-Aware Channel Attention (ConCA), which pairs the mean with a shift-invariant negative-input entropy (NegEnt), computed via a softmax over the negated activations, forming a dual descriptor that jointly encodes magnitude and concentration. A depthwise 1-D convolutional multi-layer perceptron (MLP), whose parameter count is linear in the number of channels, maps the pair to a per-channel weight. On six fine-grained benchmarks, ConCA improves over attention-free, SE-Net, and ECA-Net baselines as well as four richer descriptor-based modules under a controlled from-scratch protocol, and it generalizes across eight backbones on iNat2021-mini. These results indicate that the channel descriptor, together with the per-channel gating that maps it to attention weights, is an important but underexplored aspect of lightweight channel attention in FGVR.

Yu-Sheng Liu, Yu-Chen Tung

Department of Physics, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Kaohsiung, 824, Taiwan

Convolutional Block Attention Module Fine-Grained Perception Convolutional Linear Attention Concentration Entropy

Aug 11, 2026cs.CV

Embedding Rotation Invariance for Provable Multi-Oriented Scene Text Recognition

Multi-oriented text is ubiquitous in real-world scenes and remains a major challenge for scene text recognition (STR). Existing rotation-aware methods explicitly estimate text orientation. However, due to the lack of theoretical guarantees, they are prone to error accumulation, increased computational cost, and strong reliance on data. In this work, we incorporate rotation invariance into the STR framework to address these limitations. Specifically, we adopt an encoder-decoder architecture, embedding rotation equivariance in the encoder and rotation invariance in the decoder to construct a fully rotation-invariant network. On the decoder side, we first identify and prove the rotation-invariant property of the cross-attention mechanism and use it to formulate a rotation-invariant text decoder that maps visual features to output text in a rotation-invariant manner. On the encoder side, we propose a rotation-equivariant local-global extraction network that integrates deep equivariant convolutions with self-attention, enabling rotation-equivariant feature extraction while modeling inter-character dependencies and preserving fine-grained visual details. By integrating the encoder and decoder, we obtain an end-to-end Rotation-Invariant Scene Text Recognition network (RISTER). RISTER provides rotation invariance with theoretical guarantees, enhancing robustness on multi-oriented samples without introducing additional inference computation or relying on data-driven orientation correction. Experiments show that RISTER achieves state-of-the-art performance on both standard and multi-oriented benchmarks, surpassing the second-best model by 4.0 percent in accuracy on the general multi-oriented dataset.

Zhibin Ma, Pengwen Dai, Yi Liu +3

Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, China · Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Adversarial Artificial Intelligence, China · Baidu Inc., China +1

Scene Text Recognition Detection Transformer Image-Text Alignment Rotation Equivariance Rotary Position Embedding Convolutional Block Attention Module+3

Jul 30, 2026cs.RO

Learning Social Robot Navigation By Sensing Human Legs

Robots navigating among pedestrians typically sense their surroundings with a 2D LiDAR mounted close to the ground. At that height, the sensor mostly sees moving legs rather than whole people, yet most learning-based navigation methods still treat pedestrians as simple shapes like circles. This paper addresses that gap with CALF (Convolutional Attention for Leg Features), an end-to-end neural architecture that combines convolutional layers, attention, and MLP to interpret leg motion directly from LiDAR scans and produce safe navigation commands. The CALF policy is trained using deep reinforcement learning algorithms within LegNav, a custom lightweight 2D simulator that combines 2D LiDAR ray tracing with a novel pedestrian gait model. The resulting policy is compared against classical and learning-based baselines in terms of navigation performance and social compliance. The approach is validated through real-world experiments via zero-shot deployment on a TurtleBot 4, yielding smooth and socially compliant trajectories. Written in JAX, the LegNav simulator enables the training of a deployment-ready CALF policy in under an hour on a single consumer GPU.

Alberto Vaglio, Andrea Garulli, Antonio Giannitrapani +2

Department of Information Engineering and Mathematics, University of Siena, Siena, Italy · Uninettuno University, Rome, Italy

Robot Navigation Two-Dimensional Light Detection And Ranging Gait Recognition Convolutional Block Attention Module Multi-Scale Attention

Jul 16, 2026cs.RO

An Intelligent-Cloud Edge Multimodal Interaction System for Robots

Robust human-robot interaction in complex environments requires accurate gesture perception, semantic scene understanding, and reliable task planning under limited onboard computing resources. This paper presents a cloud-edge multimodal interaction framework that integrates an enhanced YOLO-based gesture detector with coordinated large language model (LLM) and vision-language model (VLM) agents. The proposed detector, incorporates the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) into the neck and replaces the baseline bounding-box regression objective with Distance-IoU (DIoU) loss. These modifications improve feature discrimination and localization for small or partially occluded gestures in complex backgrounds. The cloud layer performs gesture detection, scene understanding, multimodal fusion, and action planning, whereas the TonyPi robot locally handles data acquisition, communication, action execution, and feedback. Experiments on a public gesture dataset and a custom dataset show that YOLO-DC achieves precision values of 98.9% and 95.0%, with mAP@0.5 values of 90.7% and 92.7%, respectively. System-level evaluation yields success rates of 95%, 88%, and 82% for single-action, composite-action, and vision-dependent tasks. A 30 participant evaluation yields an overall mean satisfaction score of 3.69 out of 5. These results demonstrate the feasibility of combining refined gesture detection with multimodal agents for resource-constrained robotic interaction.

Zihan Guo, Xiaoqi Li

Hainan University, China

Human-Robot Interaction Robotic Perception Robot Systems Yolo26 Convolutional Block Attention Module

Jul 7, 2026cs.LG

Graph Convolutional Attention: A Spectral Perspective on Graph Denoising and Diffusion

Denoising graphs is a fundamental problem in graph learning and the core operation of graph diffusion models. Attention-based architectures like graph transformers have recently shown promise in denoising graphs. However, our principled understanding of attention-based graph denoising remains limited, making it unclear whether standard attention is the right mechanism for this task. Here we show that, under a denoising objective, linear attention is suboptimal and can only learn an average spectral denoising filter over the training distribution. This creates a fundamental limitation as graphs often vary spectrally across the distribution. To overcome this limitation, we introduce Spectral Attention, which directly utilizes the input graph spectrum and provably outperforms linear attention by a margin governed by the spectral diversity of the distribution. We then derive Graph Convolutional Attention (GCA), a practical and permutation-equivariant realization of this idea that implements spectral denoising through graph-filtered queries and keys. For stochastic block models, GCA provably matches the idealized Spectral Attention mechanism. We further show that the softmax operation, that follows the attention, provides additional denoising by approximately projecting noisy eigenvectors onto the clean eigenspace. Empirically, replacing linear attention with GCA consistently improves graph denoising and diffusion on synthetic and real datasets, with gains strongly correlated with spectral diversity. In DiGress, GCA matches standard graph-transformer performance without computing expensive structural features, and when combined with the recently proposed PEARL positional encodings, avoids explicit eigendecomposition computations resulting in faster inference without degrading quality. The code can be found here: github.com/shervinkhalafi/graph_conv_att

Shervin Khalafi, Igor Krawczuk, Sergio Rozada +3

University of Pennsylvania · King Juan Carlos University · Stanford University

Interleaved Graph Attention Iterative Denoising Methods Convolutional Block Attention Module Spectral Transformer Architectures

Jun 29, 2026cs.CV

Real-Time Underwater Image Enhancement via Frequency-Guided Dual-Path Attention

Real-time underwater image enhancement (UIE) is crucial for mobile underwater photography and autonomous robotic systems, where practical deployment typically requires low latency and compact models under constrained computational resources. Recent ultra-lightweight CNNs based on structural re-parameterization meet these constraints but operate purely in the spatial domain, ignoring the frequency-sensitive nature of underwater degradation. To address this, we propose a lightweight UIE framework that integrates two key components: a Multi-Branch Reparameterizable Convolution with Fixed DCT Priors (MBRConv-DCT) that injects structured directional frequency priors during training, and a Frequency-Guided Dual-Path Attention (FGDPA) module that fuses spatial and spectral cues via a dual-path design for adaptive feature modulation. Both components are fully compatible with structural re-parameterization: the convolution branch introduces zero additional inference cost after re-parameterization, while the attention module incurs only a minimal computational overhead. Experiments show our model achieves state-of-the-art performance with only 4.23K parameters and 600+ FPS, outperforming much larger methods in both quantitative metrics and visual quality. Code is available at https://github.com/LethyZhang/FGDPA.

Leshen Zhang, Ao Li, Ce Zhu

Glasgow College, UESTC, Chengdu, China · University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK · School of Information and Communication Engineering, UESTC, Chengdu, China

Underwater Image Enhancement Methods Convolutional Block Attention Module U-Net Real-Time Systems Prior Knowledge Integration

Jun 26, 2026cs.CV

Improving Adversarial Robustness via Activation Amplification and Attenuation

The existence of adversarial attacks is often attributed to the presence of non-robust features in neural networks. While prior defenses reduce their impact via pruning, masking, or feature recalibration, we instead propose to jointly learn to amplify and attenuate these signals through a simple activation scaling mechanism. To this end, we introduce Activation Amplification and Attenuation (A3), a lightweight plug-in module that enhances adversarial robustness with minimal modifications of the activations. A3 dynamically rescales the activations using a learnable mask and a scaling factor derived from the original activation magnitudes. The influence of adversarial perturbations can be amplified or attenuated using the same learnable parameters by simply flipping the sign of the scaling operation. The amplified signals serve as negative references to construct novel contrastive and ranking loss functions. Experimental analysis shows that learning to degrade the predictions in amplification mode simultaneously improves adversarial robustness in attenuation mode. Moreover, A3 relies on only a small number of learnable parameters, with most of its behavior being determined by the scaling mechanism rather than additional network capacity. Extensive experiments demonstrate that integrating A3 into different backbones, datasets, and training methods consistently improves adversarial robustness while introducing negligible computational and memory overhead compared to existing plug-in modules. Code is available at: https://github.com/tgoncalv/A3.

Taïga Gonçalves, Yongsong Huang, Tomo Miyazaki +1

Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Japan

Convolutional Block Attention Module

Jun 24, 2026cs.CV

REViT: Roto-reflection Equivariant Convolutional Vision Transformer

In this paper, we propose a discrete roto-reflection group equivariant vision transformer with convolutional attention. Roto-reflection equivariant networks preserve the rotational, flip and positional symmetry in feature maps, making them useful for tasks where orientation of the inputs is relevant to the model outputs. In image classification and object detection, most of the studies on roto-reflection equivariant models have focused on using convolutional neural networks rather than vision transformers. In this paper, we examine the challenges involved in achieving equivariance in vision transformers, and we propose a simpler way to implement a discretized roto-reflection group equivariant vision transformer. The experimental results demonstrate that our approach outperforms the existing approaches for developing discrete roto-reflection group equivariant neural networks for image classification.

Sheir A. Zaheer, Alexander C. Holston, Chan Y. Park

1KC Machine Learning Lab, Seoul, Rep. of Korea.

Self-Supervised Vision Transformers Rotation Equivariance Convolutional Block Attention Module Equivariant Neural Networks Equivariance

Jun 14, 2026cs.CV

GOOSE-M2F: Adapting Mask2Former for High-Fidelity, Long-Tailed Fine-Grained Semantic Segmentation in Unstructured Outdoor Terrain

We present GOOSE-M2F, a task-specific adaptation of Mask2Former for the GOOSE 2D Fine-Grained Semantic Segmentation (FGSS) Challenge at ICRA 2026. The GOOSE benchmark spans 64 fine-grained classes across unstructured outdoor terrain with a severely long-tailed distribution, where rare classes occupy fewer than 50 pixels per image. We extend the Swin-Large Mask2Former baseline with three targeted contributions: (1) 200 object queries to eliminate representational saturation; (2) a Feature Refinement Module (FRM) combining ASPP-lite and CBAM dual-attention; and (3) an Auxiliary Supervision Head that delivers direct per-pixel gradients for rare classes. A multi-stage training strategy pairs Distribution-Balanced loss, Rare-Class Copy-Paste augmentation, dynamic IoU-aware re-weighting, and EMA. At inference, a dense sliding-window engine with 2D Gaussian kernel blending and 4-scale TTA adds +10.57%. GOOSE-M2F achieves 70.08% Official Composite mIoU (63.55% fine, 76.61% coarse), placing 3rd on the GOOSE 2D FGSS leaderboard. Code and trained models are publicly available at GitHub: https://github.com/Aditya-Lingam-9000/GOOSE-M2F and Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co/XYZ9843/GOOSE-M2F.

Jyothiraditya Lingam, Nikhileswara Rao Sulake, Sai Manikanta Eswar Machara

Department of Computer Science and Engineering Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies, Nuzvid, India

Mask2Former Semantic Segmentation Feature Pyramid Convolutional Block Attention Module Augmentation Forge

Jun 9, 2026cs.LG

RoVE: Rotary Value Embeddings Attention for Relative Position-dependent Value Pathways

Rotary Position Embeddings (RoPE) make attention scores position-relative but leave the value pathway position-blind: the message sent by a value token is the same regardless of its distance from the query. We propose RoVE, a parameter-free modification that makes values position-sensitive by rotating them simultaneously with keys, and show that it turns RoPE attention into attentive convolution. This new perspective unifies several independent formulations of the same operation across computer vision, robotics, and modern LLM architectures. Trained 124M and 354M GPT-2 models show consistent empirical gains over RoPE on few-shot in-context learning, out-of-distribution perplexity, and long-context retrieval, with the clearest improvements on tasks that require long-range aggregation.

Alejandro García-Castellanos, Maurice Weiler, Erik J Bekkers

AMLab, University of Amsterdam · MIT CSAIL

Rotary Position Embedding Convolutional Block Attention Module Value

May 21, 2026cs.CV

Detection of Virus and Small Cell Patches in Foci Images Using Switchable Convolution and Feature Pyramid Networks

Accurate detection and counting of virus patches in focus-forming unit (FFU) images, also known as foci images, are important for quantifying viral infection and analyzing cellular structures. This task is challenging because biomedical targets often vary substantially in size, density, contrast, and shape. In this paper, we propose an enhanced YOLOv2-based detector that integrates a Feature Pyramid Network (FPN) to improve multi-scale feature representation. We also incorporate a switchable atrous convolution mechanism to adapt the receptive field for fine-grained targets in dense microscopy images. The proposed method is evaluated on biomedical foci image datasets for virus patch and small cell patch detection. For small cell patch detection, the model achieves a mean average precision (mAP) of 40.5% at a 25% Intersection over Union (IoU) threshold. For FFU virus patch detection, the model achieves an mAP of 68%. These results indicate that combining FPN-based feature fusion with switchable convolution improves the suitability of YOLOv2 for specialized biomedical object detection tasks

Amrita Singh, Snehasis Mukherjee

Feature Pyramid Yolo26 Convolutional Block Attention Module Sirus

May 19, 2026cs.CV

Lighting-aware Unified Model for Instance Segmentation

Foundation models like the Segment Anything Model (SAM) demonstrate impressive zero-shot generalization but frequently degrade under diverse real-world illumination, particularly for instance segmentation. In this work, we address this limitation by developing \textit{Lighting Convolutional-Attention (\lca{})}, an adapter module that enhances segmentation robustness without fine-tuning the heavy backbone. \lca{} employs a dual-branch architecture to process RGB features alongside contrast maps, enabling physically motivated sensitivity to structural changes rather than illumination artifacts. We optimize \lca{} through a pairwise training strategy, introducing a targeted loss term that explicitly penalizes discrepancies between clean images and their corresponding illumination variants. To evaluate and support this architecture, we conduct a comprehensive empirical study across multiple existing benchmarks and present a novel Unity-based synthetic dataset specifically designed to accurately replicate complex real-world lighting conditions. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our approach successfully bridges the domain gap, delivering superior lighting-robust segmentation.

Qisai Liu, Alloy Das, Zhanhong Jiang +4

Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA

Lighting Recent Vision Foundation Models Convolutional Block Attention Module Segment Anything Model

May 14, 2026eess.SP

Multi-Block Attention for Efficient Channel Estimation in IRS-Assisted mmWave MIMO

Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces (IRSs) are a promising technology for enhancing the spectral and energy efficiency of millimeter-wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. In these systems, accurate channel estimation remains challenging due to the passive nature of IRS elements and the high pilot overhead in large-scale deployments. This paper presents a deep learning-based Multi-Block Attention (MBA) framework for efficient cascaded channel estimation in IRS-assisted mmWave MIMO systems that utilize orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). First, we show the optimality of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and Hadamard matrices as phase configurations for least squares (LS) estimation. To reduce training overhead, we selectively deactivate IRS elements and compensate for induced feature loss using a two-stage architecture: (i) a Convolutional Attention Network (CAN) for spatial correlation recovery and (ii) a Complex Multi-Convolutional Network (CMN) for noise suppression. The MBA architecture mitigates error propagation through attention-guided feature refinement and denoising. Simulation results indicate that the MBA method reduces pilot overhead by up to 87% compared to the LS estimator. Additionally, at signal-to-noise ratios of 10 dB, our proposed method achieves approximately 51% lower normalized mean squared error (NMSE) than leading methods. It also maintains low computational complexity and adapts effectively to various propagation environments.

Mehrdad Momen-Tayefeh, Mehrshad Momen-Tayefeh, Maryam Sabbaghian

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran · Department of Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

Channel Estimation Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Convolutional Block Attention Module

May 8, 2026cs.CV

A Marine Debris Detection Framework for Ocean Robots via Self-Attention Enhancement and Feature Interaction Optimization

Marine debris detection for ocean robot is crucial for ecological protection, yet performance is often degraded by low-quality images with blur, complex backgrounds, and small targets. To address these challenges, we propose YOLO-MD, an enhanced YOLO-based detection framework. A Dual-Branch Convolutional Enhanced Self-Attention (DB-CASA) module is designed to strengthen spatial-channel interactions, improving feature representation in degraded images. Additionally, a lightweight shift-based operation is introduced to enhance fine-grained feature extraction for objects of varying scales while maintaining parameter efficiency. We further propose SFG-Loss to mitigate class imbalance and optimization instability via dynamic sample reweighting. Experiments on the UODM dataset demonstrate that YOLO-MD achieves 0.875 precision, 0.822 F1-score, and 0.849 mAP50, outperforming the latest state-of-the-art methods. The effectiveness of this method has also been verified through real-world robotic edge deployment experiments.

Yuyang Li, Jiashu Han, Yinyi Lai +2

School of Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hohai University, Changzhou, 213200, China · Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China · Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, 999077, China

Ship Detection Yolo26 Underwater Robots Convolutional Block Attention Module Interaction Prediction

May 8, 2026cs.CV

LoHGNet: Infrared Small Target Detection through Lorentz Geometric Encoding with High-Order Relation Learning

Infrared small target detection (IRSTD) remains challenging due to the scarcity of useful target cues and the presence of severe background clutter. Most current methods rely on conventional feature learning and local interaction modeling, where features are represented in Euclidean space. However, such designs may still be limited in describing the subtle differences of weak targets and the contextual relations between targets and backgrounds. To address these limitations, we propose LoHGNet, an IRSTD network that integrates Lorentz geometric encoding with high-order relation learning. By introducing Lorentz manifold based feature learning, LoHGNet offers a different feature representation from conventional IRSTD methods and provides new discriminative cues for IRSTD. Specifically, a Lorentz encoding branch is constructed with the Geometric Attention Guided Lorentz Residual Convolution Module (GA-LRCM) to perform feature modeling under hyperbolic geometric constraints and enhance the hierarchical geometric representation capability of weak targets. Subsequently, the hyperbolic features are mapped into the Euclidean tangent space through logarithmic mapping, and a High-Order Relation Learning Module (HORL) is designed to model the high-order contextual dependencies between targets and backgrounds via hypergraph construction, thereby improving target discrimination in complex backgrounds. Experimental results on three datasets demonstrate that the proposed LoHGNet achieves competitive performance in both detection accuracy and adaptability to complex scenes. The code will be available at https://github.com/Kingwin97.

Qianwen Ma, Yang Xu, Shangwei Deng +2

School of Marine Science and Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China · Jiangxi Key Laboratory of Advanced Electronic Materials and Device, Jiangxi Science and Technology Normal University, Nanchang 330028, China

Infrared Small Target Detection Convolutional Block Attention Module Relational Deep Learning

May 4, 2026cs.CV

Improving Imbalanced Multi-Label Chest X-Ray Diagnosis via CBAM-Enhanced CNN Backbones

Chest radiography is a widely used imaging modality for thoracic disease diagnosis, yet its conventional interpretation remains time-consuming and heavily dependent on expert knowledge. While deep learning has improved diagnostic efficiency through automated feature extraction, challenges such as class imbalance and the localization of multiple co-existing pathologies remain unsolved. In this paper, inspired by the strength of Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) in feature refinement and the capability of CNN blocks in feature extraction, we propose a strategy to integrate CBAM into traditional CNN blocks to enhance performance in multi-label classification tasks. Our method achieves a mean AUC of 0.8695 on ChestXray14 dataset, outperforming several state-of-the-art baselines.Our source code is available at: https://github.com/NNNguyenDuyyy/FETC_CBAM_Enhanced_CNN.git

Duy Nguyen Huu, Duy Hoang Khuong, Ngu Huynh Cong Viet

Department of Artificial Intelligence FPT University Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam · Department of Computing Fundamental FPT University Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Chest X-Ray Medical Image Classification Digitally Reconstructed Radiographs Multi-Label Classification Medical Imaging Convolutional Block Attention Module+2

May 2, 2026cs.CV

Certified vs. Empirical Adversarial Robust-ness via Hybrid Convolutions with Attention Stochasticity

We introduce Hybrid Convolutions with Attention Stochasticity (HyCAS), an adversarial defense that narrows the long-standing gap between provable robustness under L2 certificates and empirical robustness against strong L attacks, while preserving strong generalization across diverse imaging benchmarks. HyCAS unifies deterministic and randomized principles by coupling 1-Lipschitz, spectrally normalized convolutions with two stochastic components, spectral normalized random, projection filters and a randomized attention-noise mechanism, to realize a randomized defense. Injecting smoothing randomness inside the architecture yields an overall <= 2-Lipschitz network with formal certificates. Exten-sive experiments on diverse imaging benchmarks, including CIFAR-10/100, ImageNet-1k, NIH Chest X-ray, HAM10000, show that HyCAS surpasses prior leading certified and empirical defenses, boosting certified accuracy by up to 7.3% (on NIH Chest X-ray) and empirical robustness by up to 3.1% (on HAM10000), without sacrificing clean accuracy. These results show that a randomized Lipschitz constrained architecture can simultaneously improve both certified L2 and empirical L adversarial robustness, thereby supporting safer deployment of deep models in high-stakes applications. Code: https://github.com/misti1203/HyCAS

Joy Dhar, Song Xia, Manish Kumar Pandey +5

1Indian Institute of Technology Ropar · 2Nanyang Technological University · 3RoentGen Health +5

Adversarial Training Convolutional Block Attention Module Imagenet Convolutional Certification Medical Visual Question Answering

Apr 27, 2026cs.CV

Selective Attention-Based Network for Robust Infrared Small Target Detection

Infrared small target detection (IRSTD) plays a pivotal role in a broad spectrum of mission-critical applications, including maritime surveillance, military search and rescue, early warning systems, and precision-guided strikes, all of which demand the precise identification of dim, sub-pixel targets amid highly cluttered infrared backgrounds. Despite significant progress driven by deep learning methods, fundamental challenges persist: infrared small targets occupy extremely limited spatial extents (often only a few pixels), exhibit low signal-to-clutter ratios, and are easily confused with structurally complex backgrounds that frequently induce false alarms. Existing encoder-decoder architectures suffer from two key limitations - an information bottleneck in early convolutional stages that undermines fine-grained target perception, and static skip connections that lack the dynamic adaptability required to discriminate between genuine targets and pseudo-target regions. To address these challenges, we propose SANet, a Selective Attention-based Network built upon the classical U-Net framework and augmented with two novel components: (1) a \emph{Dual-path Semantic-aware Module} (DSM) that integrates standard convolutions for local spatial detail preservation with pinwheel-shaped convolutions for expanded, direction-sensitive receptive fields, followed by a Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) for fine-grained spatial-channel feature recalibration; and (2) a \emph{Selective Attention Fusion Module} (SAFM) that replaces conventional static skip connections with a spatially adaptive, learnable weighting mechanism to perform context-aware, cross-scale feature fusion.

Yingming Zhang, Wuqi Su, Qing Xiao +1

School of Software and Internet of Things Engineering, Zhejiang Gongshang University · School of Computer Science and Technology, Tiangong University

Infrared Small Target Detection Infrared Convolutional Block Attention Module Progressive Attention Fusion Convolutional Fine-Grained Perception

Apr 22, 2026cs.CV

Attention-Augmented YOLOv8 with Ghost Convolution for Real-Time Vehicle Detection in Intelligent Transportation Systems

Accurate vehicle detection is a critical component of autonomous driving, traffic surveillance, and intelligent transportation systems. This paper presents an enhanced YOLOv8n-based model that integrates the Ghost Module, Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM), and Deformable Convolutional Networks v2 (DCNv2) to improve detection performance. The Ghost Module reduces feature redundancy through efficient feature generation, CBAM refines feature representation via channel and spatial attention, and DCNv2 enhances adaptability to geometric variations in vehicle structures. Evaluated on the KITTI dataset, the proposed model achieves 95.4% mAP@0.5, representing an 8.97% improvement over the baseline YOLOv8n, along with 96.2% precision, 93.7% recall, and a 94.93% F1-score. Comparative analysis against seven state-of-the-art detectors demonstrates consistent superiority across key performance metrics, while ablation studies validate the individual and combined contributions of the integrated modules. By addressing feature redundancy, attention refinement, and spatial adaptability, the proposed approach offers a robust and computationally efficient solution for vehicle detection in diverse and complex traffic environments.

Syed Sajid Ullah, Muhammad Zunair Zamir, Ahsan Ishfaq +1

School of Energy and Electrical Engineering, Chang’an University, Xi’an, China · School of Information Engineering, Chang’an University, Xi’an, China

Automotive Detection Yolo26 Convolutional Block Attention Module Deformable Cnn

Dec 19, 2025cs.CV

YolovN-CBi: A Lightweight and Efficient Architecture for Real-Time Detection of Small UAVs

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, commonly known as, drones pose increasing risks in civilian and defense settings, demanding accurate and real-time drone detection systems. However, detecting drones is challenging because of their small size, rapid movement, and low visual contrast. A modified architecture of YolovN called the YolovN-CBi is proposed that incorporates the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) and the Bidirectional Feature Pyramid Network (BiFPN) to improve sensitivity to small object detections. A curated training dataset consisting of 28K images is created with various flying objects and a local test dataset is collected with 2500 images consisting of very small drone objects. The proposed architecture is evaluated on four benchmark datasets, along with the local test dataset. The baseline Yolov5 and the proposed Yolov5-CBi architecture outperform newer Yolo versions, including Yolov8 and Yolov12, in the speed-accuracy trade-off for small object detection. Four other variants of the proposed CBi architecture are also proposed and evaluated, which vary in the placement and usage of CBAM and BiFPN. These variants are further distilled using knowledge distillation techniques for edge deployment, using a Yolov5m-CBi teacher and a Yolov5n-CBi student. The distilled model achieved a mA@P0.5:0.9 of 0.6573, representing a 6.51% improvement over the teacher's score of 0.6171, highlighting the effectiveness of the distillation process. The distilled model is 82.9% faster than the baseline model, making it more suitable for real-time drone detection. These findings highlight the effectiveness of the proposed CBi architecture, together with the distilled lightweight models in advancing efficient and accurate real-time detection of small UAVs.

Ami Pandat, Punna Rajasekhar, Gopika Vinod +1

Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, 400094, Maharashtra, India. · Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Mumbai, 400094, Maharashtra, India.

Drone Detection Yolo26 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Convolutional Block Attention Module Lightweight

Nov 18, 2025cs.CV

Unifying Convolution and Attention via Convolutional Nearest Neighbors

Convolutional Neural Networks and Vision Transformers are the two dominant architectural families in computer vision, defined by spatially local convolution and global self-attention respectively. Despite their apparent differences, we show that both operations are special cases of a single

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-nearest neighbor aggregation framework: convolution selects neighbors by spatial proximity while attention selects by feature similarity, placing them at two ends of a shared operational spectrum. We introduce Convolutional Nearest Neighbors (ConvNN), a unified framework that exactly recovers standard and depthwise convolution, self-attention, and sparse attention variants including KVT-attention as special cases, and exposes the design space of neighbor-selection strategies between them through configurable similarity functions, positional encodings, and aggregation kernels. We validate ConvNN on ImageNet-1K classification across two complementary architectures: a hybrid branching layer in ResNet-50 that combines local and global feature learning, improving top-1 accuracy by 3.0% over the ResNet-50 baseline, and ConvNN-attention in ViT-Base that achieves 81.64% top-1 accuracy, surpassing standard multi-head self-attention by 0.7%. Together, these results demonstrate that ConvNN provides a principled foundation for designing operations that bridge convolutional and attention-based computation.

Mingi Kang, Jeová Farias Sales Rocha Neto

Bowdoin College

Convolutional Block Attention Module Convolutional Neural Networks Convolutional Vision Transformer Linear Attention Neighbors

Date pendingcs.LG

FEAT: A Linear-Complexity Foundation Model for Extremely Large Structured Data

Structured data is widely used in domains such as healthcare, finance, and scientific data management. Recent studies on structured data foundation models (SFMs) aim to support data analysis and mining tasks over such data, but still face scalability and generalization challenges when applied to real-world enterprise databases. First, many SFMs rely on full self-attention, which introduces an O(N^2) computational bottleneck and limits the number of tuples that can be processed jointly. Second, directly replacing attention with linear-complexity sequence models may conflict with the permutation-invariant nature of structured data, introducing artificial order bias and degrading representation quality. Moreover, models trained only on synthetic data may struggle to generalize to the heavy-tailed and heterogeneous distributions commonly found in real-world databases. To address these challenges, we propose FEAT, a linear-complexity foundation model for extremely large structured data. FEAT replaces quadratic attention with a multi-layer dual-axis encoding architecture. It integrates an adaptive-fusion bidirectional state-space model (AFBM) with convolutional gated linear attention (Conv-GLA), enabling cross-tuple contextualization in O(N) time while supporting permutation-invariant representation learning. To improve robustness under real-world data skewness, FEAT further adopts a hybrid structural causal pre-training pipeline with a robust reconstruction objective. Experiments on 12 real-world database benchmarks show that FEAT consistently outperforms representative SFMs on zero-shot tasks and scales linearly with structured-data sample length, achieving up to 50x faster inference latency.

Zhenghang Song, Tang Qian, Lu Chen +7

Zhejiang University · Ant Group · Aalborg University

Wireless Foundation Models Equivariant Learning Graph Foundation Model Linear Attention Convolutional Block Attention Module