YOLO-DAFS: A Composite-Enhanced Underwater Object Detection Algorithm

In computer vision applications, the primary task of object detection is to answer the following question: “What object is present and where is it located?”. However, underwater environments introduce challenges, such as poor lighting, high complexity, and diverse marine organism shapes, leading to...

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Main Authors: Shengfu Luo, Chao Dong, Guixin Dong, Rongmin Chen, Bing Zheng, Ming Xiang, Peng Zhang, Zhanwei Li
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-05-01
Series:Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/13/5/947
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author Shengfu Luo
Chao Dong
Guixin Dong
Rongmin Chen
Bing Zheng
Ming Xiang
Peng Zhang
Zhanwei Li
author_facet Shengfu Luo
Chao Dong
Guixin Dong
Rongmin Chen
Bing Zheng
Ming Xiang
Peng Zhang
Zhanwei Li
author_sort Shengfu Luo
collection DOAJ
description In computer vision applications, the primary task of object detection is to answer the following question: “What object is present and where is it located?”. However, underwater environments introduce challenges, such as poor lighting, high complexity, and diverse marine organism shapes, leading to missed detections or false positives in deep learning-based algorithms. To improve detection accuracy and robustness, this paper proposes an enhanced YOLOv11-based algorithm for underwater object detection that strengthens the ability to capture both local and global details and global contextual information in complex underwater environments. To better capture local and global features while integrating contextual information, the proposed method introduces several enhancements. The backbone incorporates a DualBottleneck module to enhance feature extraction, replacing the standard bottleneck structure in C3k, thus enhancing the feature extraction and the channel aggregation. The detection head adopts DyHead-GDC, integrating ghost depthwise separable convolution with DyHead for greater efficiency. Furthermore, the ADown module replaces conventional feature extraction and downsampling convolutions, reducing parameters and FLOPs by 14%. The C2PSF module, combining focal modulation and C2, strengthens local feature extraction and global context processing. Additionally, a SCSA module is inserted before the detection head to fully utilize multi-semantic information, improving the detection performance in complex underwater scenes. Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of these improvements. The model achieves 84.2% mAP50 on UTDAC2020, 84.4% on DUO and 86.7% on RUOD, surpassing the baseline by 2.5%, 1.6% and 1.2%, respectively. It remains lightweight, with 6.5 M parameters and a computational cost of 7.1 GFLOPs.
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spelling doaj-art-d3bdd1dc928e484a89c8aaa20a2da4c62025-08-20T03:47:57ZengMDPI AGJournal of Marine Science and Engineering2077-13122025-05-0113594710.3390/jmse13050947YOLO-DAFS: A Composite-Enhanced Underwater Object Detection AlgorithmShengfu Luo0Chao Dong1Guixin Dong2Rongmin Chen3Bing Zheng4Ming Xiang5Peng Zhang6Zhanwei Li7School of Ocean Engineering and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai 519082, ChinaKey Laboratory of Marine Environmental Survey Technology and Application, Guangzhou 510300, ChinaChimelong Group Co., Ltd., Guangzhou 511430, ChinaSchool of Ocean Engineering and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai 519082, ChinaSchool of Ocean Engineering and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai 519082, ChinaKey Laboratory of Marine Environmental Survey Technology and Application, Guangzhou 510300, ChinaChimelong Group Co., Ltd., Guangzhou 511430, ChinaChimelong Group Co., Ltd., Guangzhou 511430, ChinaIn computer vision applications, the primary task of object detection is to answer the following question: “What object is present and where is it located?”. However, underwater environments introduce challenges, such as poor lighting, high complexity, and diverse marine organism shapes, leading to missed detections or false positives in deep learning-based algorithms. To improve detection accuracy and robustness, this paper proposes an enhanced YOLOv11-based algorithm for underwater object detection that strengthens the ability to capture both local and global details and global contextual information in complex underwater environments. To better capture local and global features while integrating contextual information, the proposed method introduces several enhancements. The backbone incorporates a DualBottleneck module to enhance feature extraction, replacing the standard bottleneck structure in C3k, thus enhancing the feature extraction and the channel aggregation. The detection head adopts DyHead-GDC, integrating ghost depthwise separable convolution with DyHead for greater efficiency. Furthermore, the ADown module replaces conventional feature extraction and downsampling convolutions, reducing parameters and FLOPs by 14%. The C2PSF module, combining focal modulation and C2, strengthens local feature extraction and global context processing. Additionally, a SCSA module is inserted before the detection head to fully utilize multi-semantic information, improving the detection performance in complex underwater scenes. Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of these improvements. The model achieves 84.2% mAP50 on UTDAC2020, 84.4% on DUO and 86.7% on RUOD, surpassing the baseline by 2.5%, 1.6% and 1.2%, respectively. It remains lightweight, with 6.5 M parameters and a computational cost of 7.1 GFLOPs.https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/13/5/947underwater object detectionYOLOv11deep learning
spellingShingle Shengfu Luo
Chao Dong
Guixin Dong
Rongmin Chen
Bing Zheng
Ming Xiang
Peng Zhang
Zhanwei Li
YOLO-DAFS: A Composite-Enhanced Underwater Object Detection Algorithm
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
underwater object detection
YOLOv11
deep learning
title YOLO-DAFS: A Composite-Enhanced Underwater Object Detection Algorithm
title_full YOLO-DAFS: A Composite-Enhanced Underwater Object Detection Algorithm
title_fullStr YOLO-DAFS: A Composite-Enhanced Underwater Object Detection Algorithm
title_full_unstemmed YOLO-DAFS: A Composite-Enhanced Underwater Object Detection Algorithm
title_short YOLO-DAFS: A Composite-Enhanced Underwater Object Detection Algorithm
title_sort yolo dafs a composite enhanced underwater object detection algorithm
topic underwater object detection
YOLOv11
deep learning
url https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/13/5/947
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AT chaodong yolodafsacompositeenhancedunderwaterobjectdetectionalgorithm
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AT rongminchen yolodafsacompositeenhancedunderwaterobjectdetectionalgorithm
AT bingzheng yolodafsacompositeenhancedunderwaterobjectdetectionalgorithm
AT mingxiang yolodafsacompositeenhancedunderwaterobjectdetectionalgorithm
AT pengzhang yolodafsacompositeenhancedunderwaterobjectdetectionalgorithm
AT zhanweili yolodafsacompositeenhancedunderwaterobjectdetectionalgorithm