MCG-RTDETR: Multi-Convolution and Context-Guided Network with Cascaded Group Attention for Object Detection in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Imagery

In recent years, object detection in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery has been a prominent and crucial task, with advancements in drone and remote sensing technologies. However, detecting targets in UAV images pose challenges such as complex background, severe occlusion, dense small targets, and lighting conditions. Despite the notable progress of object detection algorithms based on deep learning, they still struggle with missed detections and false alarms. In this work, we introduce an MCG-RTDETR approach based on the real-time detection transformer (RT-DETR) with dual and deformable convolution modules, a cascaded group attention module, a context-guided feature fusion structure with context-guided downsampling, and a more flexible prediction head for precise object detection in UAV imagery. Experimental outcomes on the VisDrone2019 dataset illustrate that our approach achieves the highest $AP$ of 29.7% and $A{P}_{50}$ of 58.2%, surpassing several cutting-edge algorithms. Visual results further validate the model’s robustness and capability in complex environments.