DFANet: A Deep Feature Attention Network for Building Change Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery
Open Access
- 24 July 2025
- journal article
- research article
- Published by MDPI AG in Remote Sensing
- Vol. 17 (15) , 2575
Abstract
Change detection (CD) in remote sensing (RS) is a fundamental task that seeks to identify changes in land cover by analyzing bitemporal images. In recent years, deep learning (DL)-based approaches have demonstrated remarkable success in a wide range of CD applications. However, most existing methods have limitations in detecting building edges and addressing pseudo-changes, and lack the ability to model feature context. In this paper, we introduce DFANet—a Deep Feature Attention Network specifically designed for building CD in RS imagery. First, we devise a spatial-channel attention module to strengthen the network’s capacity to extract change cues from bitemporal feature maps and reduce the occurrence of pseudo-changes. Second, we introduce a GatedConv module to improve the network’s capability for building edge detection. Finally, Transformer is introduced to capture long-range dependencies across bitemporal images, enabling the network to better understand feature change patterns and the relationships between different regions and land cover categories. We carried out comprehensive experiments on two publicly available building CD datasets—LEVIR-CD and WHU-CD. The results demonstrate that DFANet achieves exceptional performance in evaluation metrics such as precision, F1 score, and IoU, consistently outperforming existing state-of-the-art approaches.Keywords
Funding Information
- Major Project of High Resolution Earth Observation System (30-Y60B01-9003-22/23)
This publication has 41 references indexed in Scilit:
- Visual attention networkComputational Visual Media, 2023
- Operational earthquake-induced building damage assessment using CNN-based direct remote sensing change detection on superpixel levelInternational Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 2022
- FCCDN: Feature constraint network for VHR image change detectionISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 2022
- Change detection and urban expansion of Port Sudan, Red Sea, using remote sensing and GISEnvironmental Monitoring and Assessment, 2021
- A deeply supervised image fusion network for change detection in high resolution bi-temporal remote sensing imagesISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 2020
- A novel change detection approach based on visual saliency and random forest from multi-temporal high-resolution remote-sensing imagesInternational Journal of Remote Sensing, 2018
- Remote sensing change detection tools for natural resource managers: Understanding concepts and tradeoffs in the design of landscape monitoring projectsRemote Sensing of Environment, 2009
- A change detection model based on neighborhood correlation image analysis and decision tree classificationRemote Sensing of Environment, 2005
- Review ArticleDigital change detection methods in ecosystem monitoring: a reviewInternational Journal of Remote Sensing, 2004
- Procedures for change detection using Landsat digital dataInternational Journal of Remote Sensing, 1981