CNTR-YOLO: Improved YOLOv5 Based on ConvNext and Transformer for Aircraft Detection in Remote Sensing Images

Aircraft detection in remote sensing images is an important branch of target detection due to the military value of aircraft. However, the diverse categories of aircraft and the intricate background of remote sensing images often lead to insufficient detection accuracy. Here, we present the CNTR-YOLO algorithm based on YOLOv5 as a solution to this issue. The CNTR-YOLO algorithm improves detection accuracy through three primary strategies. (1) We deploy DenseNet in the backbone to address the vanishing gradient problem during training and enhance the extraction of fundamental information. (2) The CBAM attention mechanism is integrated into the neck to minimize background noise interference. (3) The C3CNTR module is designed based on ConvNext and Transformer to clarify the target's position in the feature map from both local and global perspectives. This module is applied before the prediction head to optimize the accuracy of prediction results. Our proposed algorithm is validated on the MAR20 and DOTA datasets. The results on the MAR20 dataset show that the mean average precision (mAP) of CNTR-YOLO reached 70.1%, which is a 3.3% improvement compared with YOLOv5l. On the DOTA dataset, the results indicate that the mAP of CNTR-YOLO reached 63.7%, which is 2.5% higher than YOLOv5l.