Detection of ship targets in photoelectric images based on an improved recurrent attention convolutional neural network

Deep learning algorithms have been increasingly used in ship image detection and classification. To improve the ship detection and classification in photoelectric images, an improved recurrent attention convolutional neural network is proposed. The proposed network has a multi-scale architecture and consists of three cascading sub-networks, each with a VGG19 network for image feature extraction and an attention proposal network for locating feature area. A scale-dependent pooling algorithm is designed to select an appropriate convolution in the VGG19 network for classification, and a multi-feature mechanism is introduced in attention proposal network to describe the feature regions. The VGG19 and attention proposal network are cross-trained to accelerate convergence and to improve detection accuracy. The proposed method is trained and validated on a self-built ship database and effectively improve the detection accuracy to 86.7% outperforming the baseline VGG19 and recurrent attention convolutional neural network methods.