Deep Learning-Based Semantic Segmentation of Urban Features in Satellite Images: A Review and Meta-Analysis

Availability of very high-resolution remote sensing images and advancement of deep learning methods have shifted the paradigm of image classification from pixel-based and object-based methods to deep learning-based semantic segmentation. This shift demands a structured analysis and revision of the current status on the research domain of deep learning-based semantic segmentation. The focus of this paper is on urban remote sensing images. We review and perform a meta-analysis to juxtapose recent papers in terms of research problems, data source, data preparation methods including pre-processing and augmentation techniques, training details on architectures, backbones, frameworks, optimizers, loss functions and other hyper-parameters and performance comparison. Our detailed review and meta-analysis show that deep learning not only outperforms traditional methods in terms of accuracy, but also addresses several challenges previously faced. Further, we provide future directions of research in this domain.