Morphological-Priors-Guided Network With Semantic Booster and Scalable Bins Module for Height Estimation From Single-View Remote Sensing Images

Geographic height information describes the vertical spatial structure of the city and serves as important foundational data for urban management. Obtaining height information from single-view remote sensing images is a relatively low-cost and convenient approach. However, there exist several bottle...

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Main Authors: Tao Zhang, Furong Shi, Yuanping Zhu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
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Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11048889/
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author Tao Zhang
Furong Shi
Yuanping Zhu
author_facet Tao Zhang
Furong Shi
Yuanping Zhu
author_sort Tao Zhang
collection DOAJ
description Geographic height information describes the vertical spatial structure of the city and serves as important foundational data for urban management. Obtaining height information from single-view remote sensing images is a relatively low-cost and convenient approach. However, there exist several bottlenecks in the current methods for inferring height information from monocular remote sensing images, such as difficulties in learning 3-D semantic information and accurately fitting the height morphology in various local scenes. In this study, we address these challenges by proposing a morphological-priors-guided network, termed MPG-Net, for accurate height estimation from single-view remote sensing images. First, considering the semantic morphological priors, we propose to explicitly enhance the 3-D visual cues (e.g., co-occurrence relationship between shadow buildings and shadow trees) and simultaneously design a semantic booster composed of a two-stream network with a multilevel cross-stream attention fusion mechanism to facilitate the 3-D feature learning for monocular height estimation. Second, taking into account the height distribution priors, we propose a scalable bins module that can create fully adaptive bins within a flexible height range for each input image, leading a more accurate delineation of height distribution pattern. The proposed MPG-Net is comprehensively evaluated on two datasets of different scenes (i.e., ISPRS Vaihingen and Potsdam datasets). Results indicate that the proposed MPG-Net significantly outperforms the existing methods, with the lowest root-mean-square error of 1.613 m and 1.947 m on Vaihingen and Potsdam, respectively. Furthermore, extensive ablation studies demonstrate the contribution of each designed component in the proposed method.
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spelling doaj-art-d2f5635df24f4180becb2104425dc32f2025-08-20T03:30:23ZengIEEEIEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing1939-14042151-15352025-01-0118160531606510.1109/JSTARS.2025.358282311048889Morphological-Priors-Guided Network With Semantic Booster and Scalable Bins Module for Height Estimation From Single-View Remote Sensing ImagesTao Zhang0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8236-8818Furong Shi1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0750-954XYuanping Zhu2School of Computer and Information Engineering, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, ChinaSchool of Computer Science and Engineering, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, ChinaSchool of Computer and Information Engineering, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, ChinaGeographic height information describes the vertical spatial structure of the city and serves as important foundational data for urban management. Obtaining height information from single-view remote sensing images is a relatively low-cost and convenient approach. However, there exist several bottlenecks in the current methods for inferring height information from monocular remote sensing images, such as difficulties in learning 3-D semantic information and accurately fitting the height morphology in various local scenes. In this study, we address these challenges by proposing a morphological-priors-guided network, termed MPG-Net, for accurate height estimation from single-view remote sensing images. First, considering the semantic morphological priors, we propose to explicitly enhance the 3-D visual cues (e.g., co-occurrence relationship between shadow buildings and shadow trees) and simultaneously design a semantic booster composed of a two-stream network with a multilevel cross-stream attention fusion mechanism to facilitate the 3-D feature learning for monocular height estimation. Second, taking into account the height distribution priors, we propose a scalable bins module that can create fully adaptive bins within a flexible height range for each input image, leading a more accurate delineation of height distribution pattern. The proposed MPG-Net is comprehensively evaluated on two datasets of different scenes (i.e., ISPRS Vaihingen and Potsdam datasets). Results indicate that the proposed MPG-Net significantly outperforms the existing methods, with the lowest root-mean-square error of 1.613 m and 1.947 m on Vaihingen and Potsdam, respectively. Furthermore, extensive ablation studies demonstrate the contribution of each designed component in the proposed method.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11048889/Deep learningheight estimationmorphological priorssingle-view remote sensing images
spellingShingle Tao Zhang
Furong Shi
Yuanping Zhu
Morphological-Priors-Guided Network With Semantic Booster and Scalable Bins Module for Height Estimation From Single-View Remote Sensing Images
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
Deep learning
height estimation
morphological priors
single-view remote sensing images
title Morphological-Priors-Guided Network With Semantic Booster and Scalable Bins Module for Height Estimation From Single-View Remote Sensing Images
title_full Morphological-Priors-Guided Network With Semantic Booster and Scalable Bins Module for Height Estimation From Single-View Remote Sensing Images
title_fullStr Morphological-Priors-Guided Network With Semantic Booster and Scalable Bins Module for Height Estimation From Single-View Remote Sensing Images
title_full_unstemmed Morphological-Priors-Guided Network With Semantic Booster and Scalable Bins Module for Height Estimation From Single-View Remote Sensing Images
title_short Morphological-Priors-Guided Network With Semantic Booster and Scalable Bins Module for Height Estimation From Single-View Remote Sensing Images
title_sort morphological priors guided network with semantic booster and scalable bins module for height estimation from single view remote sensing images
topic Deep learning
height estimation
morphological priors
single-view remote sensing images
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11048889/
work_keys_str_mv AT taozhang morphologicalpriorsguidednetworkwithsemanticboosterandscalablebinsmoduleforheightestimationfromsingleviewremotesensingimages
AT furongshi morphologicalpriorsguidednetworkwithsemanticboosterandscalablebinsmoduleforheightestimationfromsingleviewremotesensingimages
AT yuanpingzhu morphologicalpriorsguidednetworkwithsemanticboosterandscalablebinsmoduleforheightestimationfromsingleviewremotesensingimages