Hierarchical Multiscale Fusion with Coordinate Attention for Lithologic Mapping from Remote Sensing.

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Title: Hierarchical Multiscale Fusion with Coordinate Attention for Lithologic Mapping from Remote Sensing.
Authors: Xie, Fuyuan1,2 (AUTHOR) db21010013b4yj@cumt.edu.cn, Yang, Yongguo1,2 (AUTHOR)
Source: Remote Sensing. Feb2026, Vol. 18 Issue 3, p413. 27p.
Subjects: Geological mapping, Image segmentation, Remote sensing, Remote-sensing images, Digital elevation models
Geographic Terms: China
Abstract: Highlights: What are the main findings? We propose SegNeXt-HFCA, a SegNeXt-based hierarchical multiscale fusion network with coordinate attention for lithologic mapping from Sentinel-2 and DEM data. Class-frequency-aware and boundary-weighted losses combined with seamless sliding-window inference and DenseCRF refinement significantly improve boundary fidelity and the recognition of long-tailed lithologic units, yielding 3–4% mIoU point gains over strong baselines on two structurally complex areas. What are the implications of the main findings? The proposed framework better preserves thin lithologic belts and clarifies ambiguous contacts, producing geologically more plausible lithologic maps in arid, structurally complex terranes. The methodology is transferable to other geological remote sensing applications using multispectral satellite imagery and auxiliary terrain data. Accurate lithologic maps derived from satellite imagery underpin structural interpretation, mineral exploration, and geohazard assessment. However, automated mapping in complex terranes remains challenging because spectrally similar units, narrow anisotropic bodies, and ambiguous contacts can degrade boundary fidelity. In this study, we propose SegNeXt-HFCA, a hierarchical multiscale fusion network with coordinate attention for lithologic segmentation from a Sentinel-2/DEM feature stack. The model builds on SegNeXt and introduces a hierarchical multiscale encoder with coordinate attention to jointly capture fine textures and scene-level structure. It further adopts a class-frequency-aware hybrid loss that combines boundary-weighted online hard-example mining cross-entropy with Lovász-Softmax to better handle long-tailed classes and ambiguous contacts. In addition, we employ a robust training and inference scheme, including entropy-guided patch sampling, exponential moving average of parameters, test-time augmentation, and a DenseCRF-based post-refinement. Two study areas in the Beishan orogen, northwestern China (Huitongshan and Xingxingxia), are used to evaluate the method with a unified 10-channel Sentinel-2/DEM feature stack. Compared with U-NetFormer, PSPNet, DeepLabV3+, DANet, LGMSFNet, SegFormer, BiSeNetV2, and the SegNeXt backbone, SegNeXt-HFCA improves mean intersection-over-union (mIoU) by about 3.8% in Huitongshan and 2.6% in Xingxingxia, respectively, and increases mean pixel accuracy by approximately 3–4%. Qualitative analyses show that the proposed framework better preserves thin-unit continuity, clarifies lithologic contacts, and reduces salt-and-pepper noise, yielding geologically more plausible maps. These results demonstrate that hierarchical multiscale fusion with coordinate attention, together with class- and boundary-aware optimization, provides a practical route to robust lithologic mapping in structurally complex regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of Remote Sensing is the property of MDPI and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Xie%2C+Fuyuan%22">Xie, Fuyuan</searchLink><relatesTo>1,2</relatesTo> (AUTHOR)<i> db21010013b4yj@cumt.edu.cn</i><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Yang%2C+Yongguo%22">Yang, Yongguo</searchLink><relatesTo>1,2</relatesTo> (AUTHOR)
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="JN" term="%22Remote+Sensing%22">Remote Sensing</searchLink>. Feb2026, Vol. 18 Issue 3, p413. 27p.
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Geological+mapping%22">Geological mapping</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Image+segmentation%22">Image segmentation</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Remote+sensing%22">Remote sensing</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Remote-sensing+images%22">Remote-sensing images</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Digital+elevation+models%22">Digital elevation models</searchLink>
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– Name: Abstract
  Label: Abstract
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  Data: Highlights: What are the main findings? We propose SegNeXt-HFCA, a SegNeXt-based hierarchical multiscale fusion network with coordinate attention for lithologic mapping from Sentinel-2 and DEM data. Class-frequency-aware and boundary-weighted losses combined with seamless sliding-window inference and DenseCRF refinement significantly improve boundary fidelity and the recognition of long-tailed lithologic units, yielding 3–4% mIoU point gains over strong baselines on two structurally complex areas. What are the implications of the main findings? The proposed framework better preserves thin lithologic belts and clarifies ambiguous contacts, producing geologically more plausible lithologic maps in arid, structurally complex terranes. The methodology is transferable to other geological remote sensing applications using multispectral satellite imagery and auxiliary terrain data. Accurate lithologic maps derived from satellite imagery underpin structural interpretation, mineral exploration, and geohazard assessment. However, automated mapping in complex terranes remains challenging because spectrally similar units, narrow anisotropic bodies, and ambiguous contacts can degrade boundary fidelity. In this study, we propose SegNeXt-HFCA, a hierarchical multiscale fusion network with coordinate attention for lithologic segmentation from a Sentinel-2/DEM feature stack. The model builds on SegNeXt and introduces a hierarchical multiscale encoder with coordinate attention to jointly capture fine textures and scene-level structure. It further adopts a class-frequency-aware hybrid loss that combines boundary-weighted online hard-example mining cross-entropy with Lovász-Softmax to better handle long-tailed classes and ambiguous contacts. In addition, we employ a robust training and inference scheme, including entropy-guided patch sampling, exponential moving average of parameters, test-time augmentation, and a DenseCRF-based post-refinement. Two study areas in the Beishan orogen, northwestern China (Huitongshan and Xingxingxia), are used to evaluate the method with a unified 10-channel Sentinel-2/DEM feature stack. Compared with U-NetFormer, PSPNet, DeepLabV3+, DANet, LGMSFNet, SegFormer, BiSeNetV2, and the SegNeXt backbone, SegNeXt-HFCA improves mean intersection-over-union (mIoU) by about 3.8% in Huitongshan and 2.6% in Xingxingxia, respectively, and increases mean pixel accuracy by approximately 3–4%. Qualitative analyses show that the proposed framework better preserves thin-unit continuity, clarifies lithologic contacts, and reduces salt-and-pepper noise, yielding geologically more plausible maps. These results demonstrate that hierarchical multiscale fusion with coordinate attention, together with class- and boundary-aware optimization, provides a practical route to robust lithologic mapping in structurally complex regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
– Name: AbstractSuppliedCopyright
  Label:
  Group: Ab
  Data: <i>Copyright of Remote Sensing is the property of MDPI and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.</i> (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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        Value: 10.3390/rs18030413
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        Text: English
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        PageCount: 27
        StartPage: 413
    Subjects:
      – SubjectFull: Geological mapping
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Image segmentation
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Remote sensing
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Remote-sensing images
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Digital elevation models
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: China
        Type: general
    Titles:
      – TitleFull: Hierarchical Multiscale Fusion with Coordinate Attention for Lithologic Mapping from Remote Sensing.
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            NameFull: Xie, Fuyuan
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            NameFull: Yang, Yongguo
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            – D: 01
              M: 02
              Text: Feb2026
              Type: published
              Y: 2026
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