HDFA-Net: A high-dimensional decoupled frequency attention network for steel surface defect detection

Accurately detecting surface defects is crucial for maintaining the quality of steel products. The existing methods often struggle with identifying small defects in complex scenes. To overcome this limitation, we propose a high-dimensional decoupled frequency attention network (HDFA-Net), which features a novel HDFA module. This module considers frequency domain feature information at both the channel and spatial levels and uniquely decouples feature representations into low-frequency components and high-frequency components, conveying global contextual information and highlighting local details, respectively. This innovative approach enables the network to apply distinct attention mechanisms to each frequency domain, significantly enhancing the ability to detect small defects. The HDFA-Net architecture comprises three main subnetworks: a backbone for feature extraction, a neck for multiscale feature interaction, and a head for precise defect localization. The experimental results demonstrate that HDFA-Net outperforms the state-of-the-art defect detection methods, highlighting the effectiveness of the HDFA module in improving the detection accuracy.