MarShip-DET: A Frequency-Aware Multi-Scale Fusion Algorithm for Ship Detection in Maritime Remote Sensing Imagery

To address the challenges of multi-scale target variation, complex background interference, and insufficient feature fusion quality in maritime remote sensing ship detection, this paper proposes MarShip-DET, a frequency-aware multi-scale fusion detection algorithm based on YOLO11n. Three core modules are introduced: Channel-Decoupled Progressive Feature Extraction Module (CDPFEM), which employs asymmetric channel decoupling with dual-statistic channel attention and image-relative-position-encoded multi-head self-attention to enhance discriminative feature extraction; Edge-Aware Region Context Fusion Module (EARCFusion), which integrates learnable Sobel edge sensing and cross-attention correction to achieve precise foreground refinement; and Wavelet-guided Prototype Attention Module (WavePAM), which combines Haar wavelet frequency decomposition with prototype-guided spatial compression attention to strengthen deep semantic representation. Experiments on HRSC2016 demonstrate that MarShip-DET achieves an mAP50 of 94.9% and an mAP50-95 of 84.4%, improving by 3.7% and 4.3% over the baseline, respectively. Zero-shot experiments on HRSID and SSDD, including comparisons with YOLO11n, D-FINE-N, and YOLOv13n, provide additional evidence of cross-domain transferability under the evaluated protocol.