Object detection in remote sensing images (RSIs) requires the locating and classifying of objects of interest, which is a hot topic in RSI analysis research. With the development of deep learning (DL) technology, which has accelerated in recent years, numerous intelligent and efficient detection algorithms have been proposed. Meanwhile, the performance of remote sensing imaging hardware has also evolved significantly. The detection technology used with high-resolution RSIs has been pushed to unprecedented heights, making important contributions in practical applications such as urban detection, building planning, and disaster prediction. However, although some scholars have authored reviews on DL-based object detection systems, the leading DL-based object detection improvement strategies have never been summarized in detail. In this paper, we first briefly review the recent history of remote sensing object detection (RSOD) techniques, including traditional methods as well as DL-based methods. Then, we systematically summarize the procedures used in DL-based detection algorithms. Most importantly, starting from the problems of complex object features, complex background information, tedious sample annotation that will be faced by high-resolution RSI object detection, we introduce a taxonomy based on various detection methods, which focuses on summarizing and classifying the existing attention mechanisms, multi-scale feature fusion, super-resolution and other major improvement strategies. We also introduce recognized open-source remote sensing detection benchmarks and evaluation metrics. Finally, based on the current state of the technology, we conclude by discussing the challenges and potential trends in the field of RSOD in order to provide a reference for researchers who have just entered the field.

Hyperspectral image (HSI) super-resolution (SR) is a classical computer vision task that aims to accomplish the conversion of images from lower to higher resolutions. With the booming development of deep learning (DL) technology, more and more researchers are dedicated to the research of image SR techniques based on DL and have made remarkable progress. However, no scholar has provided a comprehensive review of the field. As a response, in this paper we aim to supply a comprehensive summary of the DL-based SR techniques for HSI, including upsampling frameworks, upsampling methods, network design, loss functions, representative works with different strategies, and future directions, in which we design several sets of comparative experiments for the advantages and limitations of two-dimensional convolution and three-dimensional convolution in the field of HSI SR and analyze the experimental results in depth. In addition, the paper also briefly discusses the secondary foci such as common datasets, evaluation metrics, and traditional SR algorithms. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first review on DL-based HSI SR.

The development of deep learning has brought new prospects into the field of hyperspectral classification, and the classification ability of this method for the classification of hyperspectral images (HSIs) has been continuously improved. However, there are still some problems that must be solved; for example, the spectral–spatial features of HSIs are not effectively extracted, the labeled samples in the data set are limited, and the number of samples in different categories is imbalanced. To facilitate the progress of hyperspectral classification, a spectral–spatial fractal residual convolutional neural network with data balance augmentation is proposed here. In this network, a data balance augmentation approach that can solve the problems of limited labeled data and imbalanced categories is proposed. In addition, the spectral–spatial residual module is proposed to learn the spectral–spatial information and alleviate the problem of model degradation effectively. In addition, the spectral–spatial focal structure, which can guarantee the integrity of the information, is introduced. Moreover, the spectral–spatial dimensional transformation module, which can reduce the size and number of hyperspectral feature maps without losing the fine features, is presented. In particular, the proposed network has a strong ability to classify the categories that have a small number of samples and reaches the state-of-the-art level for three benchmark data sets.

In deep learning-based hyperspectral remote sensing image classification tasks, random sampling strategies are typically used to train model parameters for testing and evaluation. However, this approach leads to strong spatial autocorrelation between the training set samples and the surrounding test set samples, and some unlabeled test set data directly participate in the training of the network. This leaked information makes the model overly optimistic. Models trained under these conditions tend to overfit to a single dataset, which limits the range of practical applications. This paper analyzes the causes and effects of information leakage and summarizes the methods from existing models to mitigate the effects of information leakage. Specifically, this paper states the main issues in this area, where the issue of information leakage is addressed in detail. Second, some algorithms and related models used to mitigate information leakage are categorized, including reducing the number of training samples, using spatially disjoint sampling strategies, few-shot learning, and unsupervised learning. These models and methods are classified according to the sample-related phase and the feature extraction phase. Finally, several representative hyperspectral image classification models experiments are conducted on the common datasets and their effectiveness in mitigating information leakage is analyzed.

Infrared and visible image fusion can obtain combined images with salient hidden objectives and abundant visible details simultaneously. In this paper, we propose a novel method for infrared and visible image fusion with a deep learning framework based on a generative adversarial network (GAN) and a residual network (ResNet). The fusion is accomplished with an adversarial game and directed by the unique loss functions. The generator with residual blocks and skip connections can extract deep features of source image pairs and generate an elementary fused image with infrared thermal radiation information and visible texture information, and more details in visible images are added to the final images through the discriminator. It is unnecessary to design the activity level measurements and fusion rules manually, which are now implemented automatically. Also, there are no complicated multi-scale transforms in this method, so the computational cost and complexity can be reduced. Experiment results demonstrate that the proposed method eventually gets desirable images, achieving better performance in objective assessment and visual quality compared with nine representative infrared and visible image fusion methods.

Image super-resolution (SR) technique can improve the spatial resolution of images without upgrading the imaging system. As a result, SR promotes the development of high resolution (HR) remote sensing image applications. Many remote sensing image SR algorithms based on deep learning have been proposed recently, which can effectively improve the spatial resolution under the constraints of HR images. However, images acquired by remote sensing imaging devices typically have lower resolution. Hence, an insufficient number of HR remote sensing images are available for training deep neural networks. In view of this problem, we propose an unsupervised SR method that does not require HR remote sensing images. The proposed method introduces a generative adversarial network (GAN) that obtains SR images through the generator; then, the SR images are downsampled to train the discriminator with low resolution (LR) images. Our method outperformed several methods in terms of the quality of the obtained SR images as measured by 6 evaluation metrics, which proves the satisfactory performance of the proposed unsupervised method for improving the spatial resolution of remote sensing images.