Infrared Small Target Detection

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Overview

Infrared small target detection aims to localize dim objects that may occupy only a few pixels and resemble background clutter. Methods range from low-rank and sparse decomposition to CNN and transformer-style detectors that use multiscale features, frequency cues, physical priors, and, for video, motion across frames. Current work also explores point- or box-supervised training, pseudo-labels, and lightweight models for real-time use. A central challenge is improving detection and localization without increasing false alarms, especially across unfamiliar scenes, degraded imagery, and limited or noisy annotations.

Latest papers

CardsList

43 papers7 papers in the last four weeks, up 75% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Seeing through Denoising: Frequency-guided One-step Denoising for Infrared Small Target Detection

    Oct 21, 2026Xuelin Qian, Zixuan Wang, Chang Xu +2Infrared Small Target DetectionDiffusion Models

  2. Traditional and Recent Approaches for Infrared Small Target Detection : Overview, Challenges and Perspectives (Part 2)

    Oct 13, 2026Thierry Bouwmans, Anastasia Zakharova, Belmar Garcia +3Infrared Small Target Detection

    Laboratoire MIA La Rochelle Université, La Rochelle, 17000, France · ISEN Toulon , Toulon, , France · Laboratoire L3i La Rochelle Université, La Rochelle, 17000, France +1

  3. Traditional and Recent Approaches for Infrared Small Target Detection : Overview, Challenges and Perspectives (Part 1)

    Oct 13, 2026Thierry Bouwmans, Anastasia Zakharova, Belmar Garcia +3Infrared Small Target DetectionInfrared Object Detection

    Laboratoire MIA La Rochelle Université, La Rochelle, 17000, France · ISEN Toulon , Toulon, , France · Laboratoire L3i La Rochelle Université, La Rochelle, 17000, France +1

  4. SANet: Selective Attention Network for Infrared Small Target Detection

    Oct 7, 2026Yingmei Zhang, Wangtao Bao, Qin Xiao +5Small Object DetectionInfrared Small Target Detection

    School of Software and Internet of Things Engineering, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang 330032, China · School of Information Management and Mathematics, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang 330032, China · School of Computer Science and Technology, Tiangong University, Tianjin 300387, China

  5. What Frame-Level Labels Can and Cannot Do for Small-UAV Point Detection in Thermal Video

    Oct 6, 2026Wonbin Son, Gyumum Choi, Junil Seo +1Infrared Small Target DetectionUAV Detection

  6. Prompt and Refinement: Asymmetric Mutual Learning for Infrared Small Target Detection with Noisy Labels

    Oct 5, 2026Yimin Fu, Songbo Wang, Lizhuo Liu +3Infrared Small Target DetectionNoisy-Label Learning

    Department of Mathematics, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China · School of Automation, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, China · School of Electrical and Control Engineering, Xi’an University of Science and Technology, Xi’an, 710054, China

  7. IRSTD-Agent: Agentic Infrared Small Target Detection via Zoom-Guided Interaction Learning

    Oct 4, 2026Jiawen Xi, Yu Zhang, Tianyi Zhao +3Tool Use in VLMsInfrared Small Target Detection

    Beihang University · Dalian University of Technology

  8. DISTA-Net++: Rethinking Infrared Small Target Unmixing Beyond Sub-Pixel Separation

    Sep 16, 2026Mengze Xu, Zhu Liu, Weidong Sheng +4Infrared Small Target Detection

    VCIP, CS, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China · School of Software Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China · College of Electronic Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), Changsha 410000, China

  9. PICANet: Physics-Informed Cascaded Asymmetric Network for Infrared Small Target Detection

    Sep 7, 2026Jingjing Liu, Yinchao Han, Xianchao Xiu +2Infrared Small Target DetectionMulti-Scale Feature Fusion

    Shanghai Key Laboratory of Automobile Intelligent Network Interaction Chip and System, School of Microelectronics, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China · School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China · School of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China

  10. ADGNet: Asymmetric Dual-text Guided Network for Infrared Small Target Detection

    Sep 1, 2026Tongtong Wang, Mingzhu Xu, Chenglong Yu +3Prompt LearningInfrared Small Target Detection

    Shandong University · Jinan, China · Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen +1

  11. DGNet: Dual-knowledge Guided Network for Infrared Small Target Detection

    Sep 1, 2026Chenglong Yu, Mingzhu Xu, Jing Wang +3Infrared Small Target DetectionObject Detection

    Shandong University · Jinan, China · Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen +1

  12. RDANet: Relative Degradation Aware Network for Infrared Small Target Detection

    Aug 21, 2026Rui Liu, Jing Nie, Ying FuInfrared Small Target DetectionRemote Sensing Small Object Detection

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China · School of Information and Electronics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

  13. Degraded Infrared Small Object Detection via Degradation-Adapted Physics-Guided Restoration

    Aug 10, 2026Xinkai Lu, Wenjun Chen, Yi Li +2Image Corruption RobustnessPhysics-Guided Image Restoration

    National Key Lab of Multispectral Information Intelligent Processing Technology School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China · School of Ocean Engineering, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, China

  14. Understand Before Detect: Vision--Language Learning for Omni-Domain Infrared Small Target Detection

    Aug 7, 2026Haoyang Yuan, Boyang Li, Yingqian Wang +7Infrared Small Target DetectionDomain Generalization

    National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China · Peking University, Beijing, China

  15. HyTBE: Hyperbolic Target-Background Expert Model for Cross-Domain Infrared Small Target Detection

    Aug 6, 2026Aohua Li, Jin Kuang, Yubing Lu +1Infrared Small Target DetectionCross-Domain Generalization

    College of Software, Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin 130000, China · Hunan Engineering Research Center of Advanced Embedded Computing and Intelligent Medical Systems, Xiangnan University, Chenzhou, 423300, China · College of Computer Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin 130012, China +1

  16. LCMamNet: A Lightweight Cross-scale Mamba Network for Infrared Small Target Detection

    Jul 27, 2026Yuhao Fan, Le Hui, Yuchao DaiImage SegmentationInfrared Small Target Detection

    School of Electronics and Information, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China

  17. Effective Receptive Field Ordering Matters for Infrared Small Target Detection

    Jul 27, 2026Guoyi Zhang, Yanjin Du, Zhengyao Zhao +6Infrared Small Target DetectionConvolutional Neural Networks

    Aircraft Visual Perception (AVP) Lab, School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, Guangdong, China

  18. Gaze-DETR: Top-Down Guidance Through Priority Maps for Infrared Weak-Small UAV Detection with DETR

    Jul 21, 2026Nian Liu, Yuxin Yang, Shubo Lin +6Infrared Small Target DetectionDetection Transformer

    State Key Laboratory of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China · School of Advanced Interdisciplinary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 101408, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 101408, China +3

  19. Noise-Robust Box-Supervised Infrared Small Target Detection via Physics-Inspired Soft Label Optimization

    Jul 19, 2026Xizhe Zhang, Fan Shi, Mianzhao Wang +3Soft-Label LearningInfrared Small Target Detection

    Engineering Research Center of Learning-Based Intelligent System, Ministry of Education, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, 300384, China · Key Laboratory of Computer Vision and System, Ministry of Education, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, 300384, China · School of Computer Science and Engineering, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, 300384, China

  20. Beyond Unfolding: 60x Faster One-Stage Unmixing for Closely-Spaced Infrared Small Targets

    Jul 17, 2026Ximeng Zhai, Zheng Wang, Yaohong Chen +3Infrared Small Target Detection

    Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an 710119, China · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China · Beijing Institute of Astronautical Systems Engineering, Beijing 100094, China +2

  21. LCPNet: Latent Consistent Proximal Unfolding Network for Infrared Small Target Detection

    Jul 6, 2026Tianfang Zhang, Lei Li, Chang Liu +3Remote Sensing Small Object DetectionProximal Optimization

    Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100190, China. · School of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China. · School of Information and Communication Engineering and the Laboratory of Imaging Detection and Intelligent Perception, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, China.

  22. Boosting Infrared Small Target Detection via Logit-Domain Contrast and Adaptive Shape Refinement

    Jul 2, 2026Handong Zeng, Zhengeng Yang, Shuai Zhang +2Infrared Small Target DetectionObject Detection

    College of Engineering and Design, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, China · School of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China

  23. Temporal-Emerged Prompting for Segment Anything in Multiframe Infrared Small Target Detection

    Jun 26, 2026Yinghui Xing, Donghao Chu, Shizhou Zhang +1Image SegmentationPromptable Image Segmentation

    Huawei Technologies Ltd.

  24. Denoising-Enhanced Coarse-to-Fine Infrared Small Target Detection with Attention Prior-Guided Knowledge Distillation

    Jun 20, 2026Houzhang Fang, Ruixuan Huang, Qiuhuan Chen +3Attention-Guided DistillationInfrared Small Target Detection

    Xidian University, Xi’an, China · Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

  25. SCR-Guided Difficulty-Aware Optimization for Infrared Small Target Detection

    Jun 17, 2026Yunus Sevim, Behçet Uğur TöreyinInfrared Small Target DetectionAdaptive Loss Weighting

    Aselsan · Ankara, Turkey · Istanbul Technical University +1

  26. Decoupled Motion Representation Learning for Moving Infrared Small Target Detection

    Jun 13, 2026Guoyi Zhang, Peiwen Wu, Han Wang +2Representation LearningInfrared Small Target Detection

    School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, Guangdong, China

  27. RPCASSM: Robust PCA State Space Model For Infrared Small Target Detection

    Jun 1, 2026Pingping Liu, Aohua Li, Yubing Lu +3Infrared Small Target DetectionVisual SSMs

    College of Computer Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, 130012, China and also with the Key Laboratory of Symbolic Computation and Knowledge Engineering of Ministry of Education, Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin 130012, China · College of Software, Jilin University, Changchun, 130000, Jilin, China · School of Geosciences, Yangtze University, Wuhan 430100 +1

  28. Diffuse to Detect: Bi-Level Sample Rebalancing with Pseudo-Label Diffusion for Point-Supervised Infrared Small-Target Detection

    May 20, 2026Zhu Liu, Yuanhang Yao, Ping Qian +2Instance ReweightingInfrared Small Target Detection

    School of Software Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China.

  29. Learning with Semantic Priors: Stabilizing Point-Supervised Infrared Small Target Detection via Hierarchical Knowledge Distillation

    May 14, 2026Yuanhang Yao, Ping Qian, Zhu Liu +2Infrared Small Target DetectionObject Detection

    School of Software Technology, Dalian University of Technology, China

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

    May 8, 2026Qianwen Ma, Yang Xu, Shangwei Deng +2Infrared Small Target Detection

    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