Research on the semantic segmentation of Thangka images via an improved PIDNet

Jiao Wu, Tiejun Wang, Xiaoyan Hu, LingMei Tao, Tianjiao Duan and Yanjiao Wei

PLOS ONE, 2026, vol. 21, issue 5, 1-22

Abstract: In the digital preservation, restoration, and research of Thangka paintings, real-time semantic segmentation plays a crucial role in rapid image analysis. However, Thangka images exhibit intricate compositions, where principal figures often blend with backgrounds, ritual objects, and intricate ornaments, leading to blurred boundaries and fine details that challenge conventional segmentation methods in balancing accuracy and efficiency. To address this, we propose an improved PIDNet-based model incorporating ECA-Pag (Efficient Channel Attention-Path Aggregation) and LGFM (Local-Global Feature Fusion Module) modules, along with PConv3 (Partial Convolution 3), enhancing feature extraction and segmentation precision. Experimental results demonstrate that our model achieves 73.28% mIoU and mB-Fscore (mean Boundary F-score) of 40.01% on a custom Thangka dataset while maintaining 109.03 FPS (Frames Per Second), ensuring both high accuracy and real-time performance. Furthermore, evaluations on the Cityscapes benchmark confirm the model’s generalization capability, outperforming baseline methods. This work provides an efficient and reliable solution for Thangka image segmentation, with potential applications in cultural heritage preservation and broader computer vision tasks.

Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0332164

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0332164

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