Image enhancement for automatic target detection

Robert R. Muise; Abhijit Mahalanobis

doi:10.1117/12.477034

25 July 2002 Image enhancement for automatic target detection

Proceedings Volume 4726, Automatic Target Recognition XII; (2002) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.477034
Event: AeroSense 2002, 2002, Orlando, FL, United States

Abstract

Typically when one tackles an Automatic Target Detection (ATD) problem in image data, an assumption is made that the sample of target pixels is statistically different from the sample of background pixels in an immediate neighborhood of the target. Algorithms are then devised to recognize groups (or individual) outlier pixels as indicating a possible target to be further processed by an Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) algorithm. In this paper, we present a novel approach for image enhancement that raises the intensity of outlier pixels while suppressing background pixels. Thus, simple thresholding of the enhanced image becomes a powerful ATD algorithm. The approach is not a pixel-level algorithm as it is derived and implemented in the frequency domain. This also implies that, since the algorithm is not specifically intensity-based, low SNR targets can be significantly enhanced if the target frequency domain characteristics are outliers compared to the background frequency domain characteristics. Full performance statistics over a large and clutter rich IR dataset will be presented and compared to other ATD algorithms.

Citation Download Citation

Robert R. Muise and Abhijit Mahalanobis "Image enhancement for automatic target detection", Proc. SPIE 4726, Automatic Target Recognition XII, (25 July 2002); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.477034

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