Yan Zhao

Mr. Yan Zhao


Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

1Year (2026-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

View All Publications
19 March 2026 in Journal of Imaging
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
YZYan Zhao
Yan Zhao
ZXZhiyun Xiao
Zhiyun Xiao
TBTengFei Bao
TengFei Bao
YZYulong Zhou
Yulong Zhou
In recent years, deep learning has driven remarkable progress in remote sensing change detection (CD); however, practical deployment is still hindered by two limitations. First, CD results are easily degraded by imaging-induced uncertainties—mixed pixels and blurred boundaries, radiometric inconsistencies (e.g., shadows and seasonal illumination changes), and slight residual misregistration—leading to pseudo-changes and fragmented boundaries. Second, prevailing methods follow a static one-pass inference paradigm and lack an explicit feedback mechanism for adaptive error correction, which weakens generalization in complex or unseen scenes. To address these issues, we propose a feedback-driven CD framework that integrates a dual-branch U-Net with deep reinforcement learning (RL) for pixel-level probabilistic iterative refinement of an initial change probability map. The backbone produces a preliminary posterior estimate of change likelihood from multi-scale bi-temporal features, while a PPO-based RL agent formulates refinement as a Markov decision process. The agent leverages a state representation that fuses multi-scale features, prediction confidence/uncertainty, and spatial consistency cues (e.g., neighborhood coherence and edge responses) to apply multi-step corrective actions. From an imaging and interpretation perspective, the RL module can be viewed as a learnable, self-adaptive imaging optimization mechanism: for high-risk regions affected by blurred boundaries, radiometric inconsistencies, and local misalignment, the agent performs feedback-driven multi-step corrections to improve boundary fidelity and spatial coherence while suppressing pseudo-changes caused by shadows and illumination variations. Experiments on four datasets (CDD, SYSU-CD, PVCD, and BRIGHT) verify consistent improvements. Using SiamU-Net as an example, the proposed RL refinement increases mIoU by 3.07, 2.54, 6.13, and 3.1 points on CDD, SYSU-CD, PVCD, and BRIGHT, respectively, with similarly consistent gains observed when the same RL module is integrated into other representative CD backbones.