TMAFNet: A Transformer-Based Multi-Level Adaptive Fusion Network for Remote Sensing Change Detection

High-resolution remote sensing imagery encompasses complex land cover types and rich textural details, whilst temporal variations often manifest as subtle feature differences and unstable structural patterns. This renders traditional change detection methods ineffective at accurately characterizing genuine alterations, frequently leading to underdetection, false positives, and ambiguous boundaries. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a Transformer-Based Multi-level Adaptive Fusion Network. It is built upon the DeepLabV3+ encoder–decoder framework, in which a shared-weight ResNet-101 is adopted as the backbone for dual-temporal feature extraction, with the final residual block of layer 4 cropped to extract deeper semantic features at a higher spatial resolution. The Adaptive Window–Attention Feature Fusion Module (AWAFM) adaptively models local and global differences across temporal phases, enhancing sensitivity to genuine changes. The Dual Strip Pool Fusion Module (DSPFM) enhances sensitivity to directional structural variations through horizontal and vertical strip pooling. The Progressive Multi-Scale Feature Fusion Module (PMFFM) progressively aggregates deep and shallow features via semantic residual transmission. To further suppress misleading suppression caused by complex textures, the Transformer-Enhanced Reverse Attention Fusion Module (TRAFM) explicitly models long-range dependencies, effectively mitigating false change responses. On the LEVIR-CD dataset, it achieves state-of-the-art performance, with a PA and an IoU of 92.36% and 90.13%, respectively. On the SYSU-CD dataset, PA and IoU reach 88.96% and 86.15%, demonstrating TMAFNet’s stability and superiority in scenarios involving complex ground surface disturbances, weak textural variations, and large-scale structural changes.