A novel twin branch network based on mutual training strategy for ship detection in SAR images

There are inconsistent tasks and insufficient training in the SAR ship detection model, which severely limit the detection performance of the model. Therefore, we propose a twin branch network and design two loss functions: regression reverse convergence loss and classification mutual learning loss. The twin branch network is a simple but effective method containing two components: twin regression network and twin classification network. Aiming at the inconsistencies between training and testing in regression branches, we propose a regression reverse convergence loss (RRC Loss) based on twin regression networks. This loss can make multiple training samples in the twin regression branch converge to the label from the opposite direction. In this way, the test distribution can be closer to the training distribution after processing. For inadequate training in classification branch, Inspired by knowledge distillation, we construct self-knowledge distillation using a twin classification network. Meanwhile, our proposed classification mutual learning loss (CML Loss) enables the twin classification network not only to conduct supervised learning based on the label but also to learn from each other. Experiments on SSDD and HRSID datasets prove that, compared with the original method, the proposed method can improve the AP by 2.7–4.9% based on different backbone networks, and the detection performance is better than other advanced algorithms.