Multitarget detection and acquisition: a unified approach

Ronald P. S. Mahler; Marty O'Hely

doi:10.1117/12.364023

4 October 1999 Multitarget detection and acquisition: a unified approach

Ronald P. S. Mahler, Marty O'Hely

Proceedings Volume 3809, Signal and Data Processing of Small Targets 1999; (1999) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.364023
Event: SPIE's International Symposium on Optical Science, Engineering, and Instrumentation, 1999, Denver, CO, United States

Abstract

SUppose that a multitarget tracker is used to track a dim target in heavy clutter. In the paper 'Characteristics of the Acquisition of a Dim Target in Clutter', Oliver Drummond has pointed out that, for such a tracker, target acquisition is a very different problem than target detection. In particular, target acquisition requires two Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves; whereas target detection requires only one. In past presentations at this and other conferences and in the book Mathematics of Data Fusion, we have introduced 'finite-set statistics' (FISST), a direct generalization of conventional single-sensor, single-target statistics to the multitarget realm. In this paper we show how FISST results in a unification of both detection and acquisition under a familiar decision- theoretic framework. The basic idea is to use a unified Bayesian single-target tracker with clutter models, rather than a multitarget tracker. In analogy to a conventional detection problem, the acquisition problem is reduced to a conventional decision problem. In particular, we show how to define an 'acquisition ROC curve' for this sort of generalized detection problem.

Citation Download Citation

Ronald P. S. Mahler and Marty O'Hely "Multitarget detection and acquisition: a unified approach", Proc. SPIE 3809, Signal and Data Processing of Small Targets 1999, (4 October 1999); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.364023

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