YOLOv8-MU: An Improved YOLOv8 Underwater Detector Based on a Large Kernel Block and a Multi-Branch Reparameterization Module

Underwater visual detection technology is crucial for marine exploration and monitoring. Given the growing demand for accurate underwater target recognition, this study introduces an innovative architecture, YOLOv8-MU, which significantly enhances the detection accuracy. This model incorporates the large kernel block (LarK block) from UniRepLKNet to optimize the backbone network, achieving a broader receptive field without increasing the model’s depth. Additionally, the integration of C2fSTR, which combines the Swin transformer with the C2f module, and the SPPFCSPCEMA module, which blends Cross-Stage Partial Fast Spatial Pyramid Pooling (SPPFCSPC) with attention mechanisms, notably improves the detection accuracy and robustness for various biological targets. A fusion block from DAMO-YOLO further enhances the multi-scale feature extraction capabilities in the model’s neck. Moreover, the adoption of the MPDIoU loss function, designed around the vertex distance, effectively addresses the challenges of localization accuracy and boundary clarity in underwater organism detection. The experimental results on the URPC2019 dataset indicate that YOLOv8-MU achieves an mAP@0. 5 of 78. 4%, showing an improvement of 4. 0% over the original YOLOv8 model. Additionally, on the URPC2020 dataset, it achieves 80. 9%, and, on the Aquarium dataset, it reaches 75. 5%, surpassing other models, including YOLOv5 and YOLOv8n, thus confirming the wide applicability and generalization capabilities of our proposed improved model architecture. Furthermore, an evaluation on the improved URPC2019 dataset demonstrates leading performance (SOTA), with an mAP@0. 5 of 88. 1%, further verifying its superiority on this dataset. These results highlight the model’s broad applicability and generalization capabilities across various underwater datasets.