Cross-modal learning for SAR target recognition using optical vision foundation models
Frozen DINOv3 optical prototypes supervise SAR target recognition without EO/SAR pairs, improving classification on the heavily imbalanced UNICORNv2 dataset.
The framework aligns SAR embeddings to class-level prototypes built from a frozen DINOv3 electro-optical encoder, requiring no strict EO/SAR image pairs. At inference the SAR model operates independently without access to optical imagery. On UNICORNv2, a civilian vehicle dataset with heavy speckle and severe class imbalance, EO prototype alignment improves accuracy over frozen DINOv3, SAR-only finetuning, and unpaired distribution alignment baselines.
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