Small Object Detection

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Overview

Small object detection studies how to locate targets with weak visual detail, such as distant vehicles in drone images, tiny defects, or faint infrared targets. Common approaches preserve high-resolution features, fuse information across scales, and use attention, context, or frequency-based processing to distinguish targets from background; slicing high-resolution images and adding temporal or multimodal cues are also used. Methods are commonly evaluated on aerial and remote-sensing benchmarks such as VisDrone and UAVDT, alongside domain-specific datasets, but performance can change substantially across scenes and target sizes. A central tension is improving recall and localization without excessive computation, while ensuring gains transfer beyond the training dataset and remain reliable when architectural components are combined.

Latest papers

CardsList

87 papers7 papers in the last four weeks, down 22% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. On Detection Reliability for Small Object Segmentation

    Oct 25, 2026Olivier RukundoImage SegmentationInstance Segmentation

    Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering University of Limerick

  2. Dynamic Query as Budgeting for Tiny Object Detection

    Oct 24, 2026Yi Zhang, Di Xiong, Ge Gao +4Small Object DetectionDetection Transformer

    School of Intelligence Science and Technology, Nanjing University, China · Center for Advanced Intelligence Project, RIKEN, Japan

  3. FocusOVD: Geometric and Contextual Feature Refinement for Open-Vocabulary Small-Object Detection

    Oct 20, 2026Hanlin Kou, Beiqi Bai, Li Chen +3Open-Vocabulary Object DetectionObject Detection

    School of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou,China · Sinosteel Zhengzhou Research Institute of Steel Wire Products Co., Ltd., China

  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. Towards benchmarking Western Bluebird detection in the wild

    Oct 6, 2026Estela Monserrat Arriaga Santana, Julian Rosas Scull, Ibeth P. Alarcón +3Open-Vocabulary Object DetectionInstance Segmentation

    Universidad Nacional Aut´onoma de M´exico, Mexico · Universidad Aut´onoma de Tlaxcala, Mexico · The University of Texas at El Paso, USA and INAOE, Mexico

  6. PCLM: Small-target localization with frozen CLIP via prototype contrast and local magnification

    Oct 4, 2026Zhipeng Ye, Feng Jiang, Qiufeng Wang +1Prototype-Based LearningSmall Object Detection

    Taizhou Institute of Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Taizhou 225300, Jiangsu, China · Department of Intelligence Science, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou 215123, Jiangsu, China · School of Computer Science and Technology, University of Arizona, Tucson 85705, AZ, USA

  7. Automated Species Identification in Camera Trap Images for Wildlife Conservation

    Sep 28, 2026Nowshin Amin, Nafisa Tabassum Oyshi, Tahmid Abrar Zidan +2Small Object DetectionObject Detection

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering Brac University

  8. CSCWD: Cross-Scale Channel-wise Knowledge Distillation for Lightweight Tiny Object Detection on Edge Devices

    Sep 24, 2026Amir Zamani, Zeinab Ghasemi-NaraghiSmall Object DetectionEfficient Object Detection

    Department of Computer Engineering, Islamic Revolution Comprehensive University, Tehran, Iran · Department of Computer Engineering, K.N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

  9. PointEvent: Rethinking Event-based Tiny Object Detection via Serialized Motion Evidence Accumulation

    Sep 17, 2026Zongze Wu, Baofeng Jia, Weiqi Yan +4Small Object DetectionEfficient Object Detection

    State key Lab of Extreme Environment Optoelectronic Dynamic Testing Technology and Instrument, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, China · Jiangsu Key Lab of Visual Sensing and Intelligent Perception, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, China · Fujian Key Laboratory of Urban Intelligent Sensing and Computing, Xiamen University, China

  10. Small Object Detection in Drone Aerial Imagery with LAF-YOLOv10

    Sep 13, 2026Quratulain Nayeem, Fahmina Taranum, Mohammed Mudassir UddinObject DetectionSmall Object Detection

  11. SpermYOLO: A Coordinated YOLO-Based Detector for Accurate and Efficient Sperm and Impurity Detection in Microscopic Images

    Sep 13, 2026Shengqi Chen, Zilin Wang, Xingyu Pan +3Object DetectionMicroscopy Image Analysis

    School of Electronic Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, 10 Xitucheng Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100876, China · School of Information and Communication Engineering, Zhongyuan University of Technology, 41 Zhongyuan Middle Road, Zhengzhou, Henan Province 450007, China

  12. GRIPNet: Gaussian Radial Intensity Prior Guided Architecture for Pulmonary Nodule Detection in CT

    Sep 10, 2026Haojie Yang, Ran SuSmall Object DetectionMedical Image Anomaly Detection

    College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

  13. Improving Faint Object Detection for Space Situational Awareness with Variational Autoencoders

    Sep 10, 2026Angela Cratere, Luca Ghilardi, Vishnu Reddy +3Variational AutoencodersSmall Object Detection

    Department of Advanced Computing Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands · Systems and Industrial Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA · Space4 Center, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA +2

  14. ScopeMamba-YOLO: Widening the Perceptual Scope Inward and Outward for Small Object Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery

    Sep 9, 2026Junjie Fan, Yijun Mai, Linduo Wei +5Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingRemote Sensing Small Object Detection

    School of Intellectual Property, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China · School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China · School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China

  15. Reading Decoder Trajectories: Training-Free Counterfactual Query-Trajectory Reliability for Small-Object Detection

    Sep 6, 2026Zhaoning Shi, Bo MaSmall Object DetectionObject Detection

    Beijing Institute of Technology Beijing, China

  16. RailGen: Improving Railway Intrusion Detection via Agent-Guided Small-Scale Foreign Object Generation

    Aug 31, 2026Quan Hao, Ziyang Tao, Chenxi Zhang +3Synthetic Data AugmentationSmall Object Detection

    School of Information Science and Technology, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China · College of Computer Science, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China · Institute of Automation, State Key Laboratory of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Systems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

  17. CF-YOLO: Context-Aware Feature Refinement for Camouflaged Industrial Micro-Defect Detection

    Aug 28, 2026Xinda Yu, Kunxin Zheng, Chunan Yu +4Industrial Anomaly DetectionReal-Time Object Detection

    School of Information Engineering, Huzhou University, Huzhou, 313000, China. · School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210000, China.

  18. CoSWA-YOLOv12: Scale-Invariant Tiny Object Detection and Segmentation of Malaria Parasites

    Aug 25, 2026Ahmed Tahiru Issah, Carine MukamakuzaSmall Object DetectionObject Detection

    Carnegie Mellon University, Kigali, Rwanda

  19. ROI-Gated SAHI: Content-Adaptive Slicing-Based Inference for Efficient Object Detection

    Aug 25, 2026Rashid Riyadh, Abd Ullah Khan, Imad Gohar +1Object DetectionEfficient Inference

    Faculty of Information Technology, City University, Malaysia · Department of Information Convergence Engineering, Kyung Hee University, South Korea · Department of Computer Science, National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan +3

  20. Bee Detection and Tracking at Hive Entrance using YOLO11 and ByteTrack

    Aug 24, 2026Thi Thu Thao Nguyen, Johannes ReschkeSmall Object DetectionObject Counting

    IoT Engineering Savonia University of Applied Sciences Finland · Electrical and Information Engineering Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Regensburg Germany

  21. Optimizing YOLO27, YOLO26, YOLO11, and YOLOv8 for Fine-Grained Small-Object Detection and Segmentation in Complex Orchard Environments

    Aug 23, 2026Ranjan Sapkota, Manoj KarkeeSmall Object DetectionInstance Segmentation

    Cornell University, AgRobotics Lab, 134 Riley-Robb Hall, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

  22. Comparative Study of Out-of-the-Box Technology for Automatic Target Detection and Recognition

    Aug 18, 2026Alma M. Liezenga, Lotte Nijskens, Henrik R. Baumann +12Object DetectionAerial Object Detection

    Intelligent Imaging, TNO Defence, Safety and Security, The Hague, The Netherlands · Division Defence Systems, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, Kongsberg, Norway · Object Recognition OBJ, Fraunhofer IOSB, Karlsruhe, Germany +5

  23. MITE-Net: SWaP-Optimized 4K Video Tiny Target Perception for Embodied Edge SAR

    Aug 16, 2026Mingshuo Xu, Mu Hua, Jigen Peng +2Small Object DetectionEfficient Object Detection

    School of Mathematics and Computing Science, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK · Machine Life and Intelligence Research Center, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China

  24. Deep Learning based Detection of Fishing Vessels and Fishing Monitoring using Nightlight Images

    Aug 10, 2026Shantakar Mohanty, Prasun Kumar Gupta, Raian Vargas MarettoRemote Sensing Image UnderstandingMaritime Surveillance

    Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, ISRO, Dehradun, India · University of Twente, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Enschede, The Netherlands

  25. Where Is the Bee? Detecting Tiny Pollinators with a Single Collaborative-Head Transformer

    Aug 9, 2026Junsu Kim, Seungryul BaekSmall Object DetectionDetection Transformer

    UNIST, South Korea

  26. SkySeaLand: A Wide-Format Satellite Transportation Benchmark with an Ultra-Lightweight Detection Baseline

    Aug 7, 2026Md. Zahid Hasan Riad, Md Sultanul Islam OviRemote Sensing Small Object DetectionSmall Object Detection

    Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Green University of Bangladesh, Bangladesh · Dept. of Computer Science, George Mason University, Virginia, USA

  27. DyFrDet: Towards Accurate Small Object Detection via Dynamic Frequency Suppression with Label Disambiguation

    Aug 3, 2026Zihan Yang, Yang Guo, Hongxing Zhang +2Frequency-Domain Feature LearningSmall Object Detection

    Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications · Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University

  28. Beyond Symmetric Fusion: Exploiting Task-Dependent Modality Strengths for RGB-Event Small Object Detection

    Aug 2, 2026Ziheng Wang, Chaolang Li, Yutong Yang +5Small Object DetectionDetection Transformer

    Sun Yat-sen University · Shenzhen University

  29. Small-Pollinator Detection in Cluttered Field Video

    Jul 24, 2026Onur Onal, Chen ChenSmall Object DetectionDetection Transformer

    Iowa State University · Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA · Institute of AI, University of Central Florida +1

  30. SkyEV: RGB-Event UAV detection and tracking dataset and baseline

    Jul 21, 2026Jakub Mandula, Sebastian Heusinger, Julian Moosmann +2Visual Object TrackingSmall Object Detection

    ETH Zurich