Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41745434›Full record

ArticleJournal of imaging2026

YOLO11s-UAV: An Advanced Algorithm for Small Object Detection in UAV Aerial Imagery.

Qi Mi, Jianshu Chao, Anqi Chen, Kaiyuan Zhang, Jiahua Lai

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of imaging, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Qi MiCollege of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou 350108, China.ORCID 0009-0004-5922-4364
Jianshu ChaoQuanzhou Institute of Equipment Manufacturing, Haixi Institutes, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Quanzhou 362216, China.ORCID 0000-0002-7197-5919
Anqi ChenCollege of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou 350108, China.ORCID 0009-0000-2993-450X
Kaiyuan ZhangQuanzhou Institute of Equipment Manufacturing, Haixi Institutes, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Quanzhou 362216, China.ORCID 0009-0007-0991-9784
Jiahua LaiQuanzhou Institute of Equipment Manufacturing, Haixi Institutes, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Quanzhou 362216, China.ORCID 0009-0008-2179-6745

Funding

Collaborative Innovation Platform Project of the Fuzhou-Xiamen-Quanzhou National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone 2023FX0002STS Project of Fujian Science and Technology Program 2024T3102
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are now widely used in various applications, including agriculture, urban traffic management, and search and rescue operations. However, several challenges arise, including the small size of objects occupying only a sparse number of pixels in images, complex backgrounds in aerial footage, and limited computational resources onboard. To address these issues, this paper proposes an improved UAV-based small object detection algorithm, YOLO11s-UAV, specifically designed for aerial imagery. Firstly, we introduce a novel FPN, called Content-Aware Reassembly and Interaction Feature Pyramid Network (CARIFPN), which significantly enhances small object feature detection while reducing redundant network structures. Secondly, we apply a new downsampling convolution for small object feature extraction, called Space-to-Depth for Dilation-wise Residual Convolution (S2DResConv), in the model's backbone. This module effectively eliminates information loss caused by strided convolution or pooling operations and facilitates the capture of multi-scale context. Finally, we integrate a simple, parameter-free attention module (SimAM) with C3k2 to form Flexible SimAM (FlexSimAM), which is applied throughout the entire model. This improved module not only reduces the model's complexity but also enables efficient enhancement of small object features in complex scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate that on the VisDrone-DET2019 dataset, our model improves mAP@0.5 by 7.8% on the validation set (reaching 46.0%) and by 5.9% on the test set (increasing to 37.3%) compared to the baseline YOLO11s, while reducing model parameters by 55.3%. Similarly, it achieves a 7.2% improvement on the TinyPerson dataset and a 3.0% increase on UAVDT-DET. Deployment on the NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX SUPER platform shows that our model achieves 33 FPS, which is 21.4% lower than YOLO11s, confirming its feasibility for real-time onboard UAV applications.

Indexed as

feature pyramidlightweight object detectorsmall object detectionUAV aerial imageryVisDrone-DET2019YOLO11s

Identifiers

PMID41745434
PMCPMC12942582

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.