Papers for

remote sensing analysts

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Conditional flow matching improves image recovery from noisy measurements

Fast and Faithful: Principled Conditional Flow Matching for Inverse Problems

Abstract: Flow matching approaches to imaging inverse problems commonly incorporate measurements in two ways. Conditioning-based approaches supply measurement-derived information as a network input, often through concatenation, while inference-guided approaches combine an unconditional velocity field with a separate data-consistency update. In these common formulations, the forward model is not explicitly enforced within the learned conditional velocity field. We propose a principled parametrization of the measurement-conditional velocity field to solve inverse problems. Under linear interpolation, we express the conditional velocity $v(x_t,t,y)$ in terms of the posterior mean $E[x_1 | x_t,y]$, and characterize that mean as the unique minimizer of a variational objective whose data-consistency term is explicit. We further prove that the velocity field defines a probability flow from the source distribution to the measurement-conditioned posterior. Splitting the variational objective yields a conditional velocity parameterization with operator-dependent data-consistency updates, which we train end-to-end under the flow-matching objective, with no additional guidance at inference. Our method achieves state-of-the-art PSNR with $50\times$ fewer function evaluations than the strongest flow baseline. Varying the sampling steps provides test-time control over the distortion-perception trade-off without retraining.

Fri 11 SeptComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The gist
Imaging inverse problems involve figuring out the original image from partial or noisy measurements. The authors propose a new approach that uses a mathematical idea called conditional flow matching to better reconstruct images by integrating measurement information directly into the recovery process. Their method is faster and produces higher-quality images than previous flow-based techniques. It also lets users balance the trade-off between image sharpness and distortion at test time without retraining the model.
Open 2609.12953v1

Pre-trained tensor method improves multi-dimensional image recovery quality

Pre-Trained Low-Rank Tensor Decomposition for Multi-Dimensional Image Recovery

Abstract: Recently, tensor decompositions are prevalent for multi-dimensional image representation, which learn the instance-specific structure of each image from scratch. However, tensor decompositions neglect the common structure across different images, leading to limited semantic modeling capability, high computational cost, and a large number of learnable parameters. To address this challenge, we suggest the first pre-trained low-rank tensor decomposition (PLTD) framework, which organically integrates the pre-trained large vision model into the classical tensor decomposition framework. Beyond the shallow and untrained deep tensor decomposition, the suggested PLTD achieves an unprecedented balance among higher recovery fidelity, fewer learnable parameters, and smaller carbon footprint. Specifically, PLTD factorizes the target tensor into a latent tensor and a learnable transform that maps the latent tensor back to the original data domain. The latent tensor consists of two indispensable and complementary terms, i.e., a fixed pre-trained latent tensor and a learnable low-rank latent tensor. The fixed pre-trained latent tensor is distilled from a pre-trained large vision model (i.e., DINOv3) to capture the common structure of the target tensor, while the learnable low-rank latent tensor characterizes the instance-specific structure of the target tensor. To examine the potential of PLTD, we develop the corresponding multi-dimensional image recovery model and theoretically justify the advantages of this framework. Additionally, we discuss the connections between PLTD and classical tensor decomposition frameworks. Extensive experiments on multi-dimensional image recovery demonstrate that PLTD consistently achieves superior performance compared with state-of-the-art methods.

Fri 11 SeptComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The gist
Recovering detailed multi-dimensional images usually requires learning each image's structure from scratch, which is slow and costly. The authors propose a method that uses knowledge from a large pre-trained vision model to capture common features across images, combined with a smaller part that learns image-specific details. This approach needs fewer resources, fewer learnable parameters, and recovers images more accurately than previous methods. Their technique strikes a new balance between quality, efficiency, and environmental impact.
Open 2609.12843v1

Heat conduction approach improves joint classification of hyperspectral and LiDAR data

Toward Interpretable Multimodal Fusion: Heat Conduction Modeling for Hyperspectral and LiDAR Joint Classification

Abstract: The fusion of hyperspectral (HS) and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data plays a crucial role in enhancing land-cover classification by jointly exploiting spectral, spatial, and structural cues. However, existing multimodal fusion methods still struggle to model long-range dependencies and complex anisotropic interactions while maintaining computational efficiency. This paper introduces M2Heat, a physics-inspired framework that investigates multimodal fusion through the lens of heat conduction. At its core, a physics-driven visual heat conduction module (vHeat) and enhanced Frequency Value Embeddings (FVEs) simulate anisotropic information flow, enabling the capture of global dependencies with sub-quadratic complexity and physical interpretability. This mechanism, combined with a hybrid spatial-frequency fusion strategy named Cross-Frequency Fusion (CFF) module, produces highly discriminative and robust feature representations. M2Heat achieves competitive overall performance on three benchmarks, i.e., Trento, Houston2013, and Augsburg, while providing an interpretable heat-conduction-guided perspective for multimodal feature fusion. These results indicate the potential of heat-conduction-guided neural operators for efficient and interpretable RS multimodal fusion. The source code is publicly available at https: /github.com/Weikan0425/M2Heat_HSI_LiDAR.

Thu 10 SeptComputer Vision and Pattern RecognitionArtificial Intelligence
The gist
Combining data from hyperspectral imaging and LiDAR helps better identify land types on Earth. The authors propose a new method inspired by how heat spreads, to mix these two data types more effectively. Their approach captures complex relationships across the data while remaining computationally efficient and easier to understand. Tests on several datasets show their method performs competitively and provides insight into how the data fusion works.
Open 2609.11040v1

Conformal calibration transfer improves prediction confidence across data shifts

Conformal Calibration Transfer

Abstract: Conformal prediction converts point predictions into set-valued predictions with coverage guarantees under exchangeability between calibration and deployment data. We study conformal calibration transfer, where this requirement fails because labeled calibration is available only in a source space, while prediction sets are needed in a target space linked to the source through unlabeled paired observations (e.g., paired modalities or sensor changes). We propose Transported Conformal Calibration (TCC): we transport labeled source calibration into the target space using the paired data, and then correct residual post-transport mismatch using only unlabeled target inputs. We instantiate this correction with two complementary methods: TCC-KS, which uses a label-free uncertainty surrogate to detect mismatch and adjust calibration conservatively, and weighted-TCC, which reweights transported calibration toward the target domain for improved efficiency when weights are stable. We provide finite-sample target-domain coverage guarantees that adapt to an observable measure of mismatch. Across CIFAR-100-C, Tiny-ImageNet-C, and SEN12MS, we show reliable target-domain coverage transfer without labeled target calibration data, with label-free diagnostics that predict when correction is needed.

Wed 9 SeptMachine Learning
The gist
Prediction models often need to say how confident they are in their guesses, but they can struggle when the data changes from where they learned. The authors study how to transfer calibration—methods that adjust confidence—from one data type (source) to another related but different type (target). They create a method that uses pairs of related unlabeled data to move calibration over, then fixes any leftover differences using only unlabeled information. Their approach helps make reliable predictions even when new labeled data isn’t available, and can signal when corrections are needed.
Open 2609.10737v1

Meta-learning improves decisions in adversarial linear bandit problems

Meta-LinEXP3: Online-within-Online Learning for Adversarial Linear Contextual Bandits

Abstract: Meta-learning has emerged as an effective paradigm for transferring knowledge across sequential bandit tasks. While substantial progress has been made for stochastic bandits and non-contextual adversarial bandits, meta-learning for adversarial linear contextual bandits (ALCBs) with random action sets remains largely unexplored. To address this problem, we propose Meta-LinEXP3, an online-within-online algorithm that constructs a predictable task-level prior from completed tasks to guide the inner LinEXP3 learner. For known context distributions, we develop a policy-centered estimator that achieves an intrinsic-dimension $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{n})$ per-task regret bound. For unknown distributions, we introduce a past-only regularized moment estimator with an $\mathcal{O}(n^{2/3})$ leading regret term and explicit finite-sample error. We further establish a direct connection between prior accuracy and transfer regret, showing that increasingly accurate priors yield sublinear transfer-dependent regret across tasks. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of Meta-LinEXP3, including its application to structured hyperspectral tensor sampling.

Wed 9 SeptMachine Learning
The gist
Some computer programs learn to make decisions by trying different options and learning from past experience. This paper studies a scenario where the choices and outcomes can change in tricky, potentially opposing ways. The authors created an approach called Meta-LinEXP3 that helps a program learn better over time by using knowledge from previous tasks to guide future ones. Their method adjusts even when the context or pattern of choices is not fully known and shows improved performance in tests.
Open 2609.09907v1

New method improves accuracy of hyperspectral image material detection

Interpretable Hyperspectral Unmixing Framework with Fixed Endmember Prior and Structured Residual Refinement

Abstract: Hyperspectral unmixing decomposes mixed pixels into material endmembers and their abundances from contiguous spectral observations. In modular sensing pipelines, endmembers are often first identified and then treated as fixed during abundance estimation. When this fixed endmember prior is inaccurate, spatially structured mismatch arising from illumination changes, sensor artifacts, or material boundaries may be incorrectly captured by the abundance variables, leading to unstable decompositions. This study presents an interpretable stage-wise hyperspectral unmixing framework (I-HyperSU) under fixed endmember priors, which is explicitly decomposed into a fixed endmember matrix $\mathbf{A}$, an abundance block $\mathbf{X}$, and a structural residual refinement block $\mathbf{S}$. The X-block estimates abundances using FISTA with nonnegativity and sparsity enhancement, and a soft penalty that approximately enforces sum-to-one constraints. The S-block jointly applies low-rank SVD structural regularization and a lightweight deep image prior (DIP) to refine structured residuals. This staged design makes the interaction between abundance and residual components transparent and interpretable. Experiments on Samson, Urban, and Jasper Ridge datasets demonstrate that, under fixed and imperfect endmember priors, soft abundance relaxation consistently outperforms hard simplex projection. Under the default N-FINDR endmember prior, the proposed framework reduces the joint reconstruction error by 61.7\%--69.5\% compared with a fixed-$\mathbf{A}$ UCLS baseline, while keeping the abundance RMSE nearly unchanged, indicating that the residual refinement branch accounts for structured model mismatch without degrading the abundance estimates. For example, on Urban, the reconstruction SAM decreases from $5.99^\circ$ for the X-only model to $1.92^\circ$ for the full model.

Tue 8 SeptComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The gist
Hyperspectral images show many colors for each pixel, helping identify materials, but these pixels often mix several substances, making it hard to tell them apart. The authors introduce a step-by-step method that treats the known materials as fixed and better separates the mixture by adding a correction step for errors caused by lighting or sensor problems. Their approach improves the accuracy of separating materials without messing up the estimated amounts, making the results easier to understand. Tests on standard datasets showed much better image reconstruction and clearer recognition of materials.
Open 2609.08786v1

CoordFormer enables accurate segmentation on huge images with less computing

CoordFormer: Give Me Any Coordinates and I Will Give You Labels

Abstract: Semantic segmentation on very-high-resolution images remains challenging due to the high computational cost and the difficulty of capturing fine-grained details. We propose CoordFormer, a novel coordinate-based architecture for semantic segmentation that predicts labels at arbitrary spatial locations through a Coordinate Decoder equipped with a Localized Cross-Attention mechanism. The decoder combines coordinate embeddings with high-resolution local patch features and interacts with global tokens extracted from a downsampled image processed by a ViT foundation encoder, enabling rich semantic context while preserving pixel-level precision. This design enables flexible inference at arbitrary resolutions while keeping memory low on very-high-resolution inputs, and supports an efficient semantic-edge-focused strategy that concentrates computation along boundaries, maintaining fine-grained accuracy while reducing latency and computational cost. CoordFormer achieves state-of-the-art performance on MaSS13K and outperforms comparably sized and higher-parameter methods on DIS5K and KPIs, demonstrating its effectiveness for high-quality, very-high-resolution semantic segmentation.

Tue 8 SeptComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The gist
Looking at very large, detailed images and labeling every part is hard because it needs a lot of computer power and can miss tiny details. The authors designed CoordFormer, a method that can label any exact spot in these images by combining detailed local features with a broad view of the whole image. This approach keeps the image sharp and detailed while using less memory and computing power. It also smartly focuses effort on edges where details matter most, speeding up the process without losing accuracy.
Open 2609.08660v1

Sar target recognition improved using optical vision models

Cross-modal learning for SAR target recognition using optical vision foundation models

Abstract: Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is an important modality in a wide range of imaging applications due to its versatile, long range and near all weather operating capabilities. However, Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) remains a challenging problem due to limited labelled data, the strong speckle in SAR images and the significant domain gap between SAR and more abundant optical imagery. In contrast, electro-optical (EO) imagery benefits from massive datasets, clearer visual structure and powerful foundation models. In this work, we investigate how vision foundation models trained on optical data can provide class level supervision for SAR classification. We propose a cross-modal EO to SAR prototype alignment framework in which a frozen EO encoder, based on a DINOv3 vision foundation model, is used to construct class level optical prototypes without requiring strict EO/SAR pairs. A SAR model is then trained to classify SAR images while aligning its embeddings to the corresponding EO class prototype. At inference time, the SAR model operates independently, without access to optical imagery. We evaluate our approach on the UNICORNv2 dataset, an EO and SAR dataset of civilian vehicles with heavily speckled images and severe class imbalance. EO prototype alignment improves SAR classification accuracy over frozen DINOv3, SAR only finetuning and unpaired distribution alignment baselines, and t-SNE visualizations provide qualitative evidence of clearer separation among classes in the trained SAR embedding space. These results suggest that optical vision foundation models, despite being trained on visible spectrum imagery, provide transferable information for SAR image classification, offering a practical method for using large scale pretrained vision foundation models across challenging sensing modalities.

Mon 7 SeptComputer Vision and Pattern RecognitionMachine Learning
The gist
Recognizing objects in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images is hard because SAR images are noisy and not many labeled examples exist. The authors show that using large optical vision models trained on everyday images can help recognize SAR targets better. They align SAR image recognition with optical image categories without needing exact matching pairs during training. Their approach works well on a dataset of vehicle images and improves classification accuracy. This suggests that knowledge from normal photos can help understand radar images.
Open 2609.07753v1