Advanced Building Detection with Faster R-CNN Using Elliptical Bounding Boxes for Displacement Handling

This study presents an enhanced Faster R-CNN framework that incorporates elliptical bounding boxes to significantly improve building detection in off-nadir imagery, effectively reducing severe geometric distortions caused by oblique sensor angles. Off-nadir imagery enhances architectural detail capt...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sejung Jung, Ahram Song, Kirim Lee, Won Hee Lee
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-04-01
Series:Remote Sensing
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/17/7/1247
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Summary:This study presents an enhanced Faster R-CNN framework that incorporates elliptical bounding boxes to significantly improve building detection in off-nadir imagery, effectively reducing severe geometric distortions caused by oblique sensor angles. Off-nadir imagery enhances architectural detail capture and reduces occlusions, but conventional bounding boxes, such as axis-aligned and rotated bounding boxes, often fail to localize buildings distorted by extreme perspectives. We propose a hybrid method integrating elliptical bounding boxes for curved structures and rotated bounding boxes for tilted buildings, achieving more precise shape approximation. In addition, our model incorporates a squeeze-and-excitation mechanism to refine feature representation, suppress background noise, and enhance object boundary alignment, leading to superior detection accuracy. Experimental results on the BONAI dataset demonstrate that our approach achieves a detection rate of 91.96%, significantly outperforming axis-aligned bounding boxes (65.75%) and rotated bounding boxes (87.13%) in detecting irregular and distorted buildings. By providing a highly robust and adaptable detection strategy, our approach establishes a new standard for accurate and shape-aware building recognition in off-nadir imagery, significantly improving the detection of distorted, rotated, and irregular structures.
ISSN:2072-4292