A novel infrared small moving target detection method based on tracking interest points under complicated background

Infrared moving target detection is an important part of infrared technology. We introduce a novel infrared small moving target detection method based on tracking interest points under complicated background. Firstly, Difference of Gaussians (DOG) filters are used to detect a group of interest points (including the moving targets). Secondly, a sort of small targets tracking method inspired by Human Visual System (HVS) is used to track these interest points for several frames, and then the correlations between interest points in the first frame and the last frame are obtained. Last, a new clustering method named as R-means is proposed to divide these interest points into two groups according to the correlations, one is target points and another is background points. In experimental results, the target-to-clutter ratio (TCR) and the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves are computed experimentally to compare the performances of the proposed method and other five sophisticated methods. From the results, the proposed method shows a better discrimination of targets and clutters and has a lower false alarm rate than the existing moving target detection methods.     

Principal curvature for infrared small target detection

Small target detection in infrared image with complex background and low signal–noise ratio is an important and difficult task in the infrared target tracking system. In this paper, a principal curvature-based method is proposed. The principal curvatures of target pixels are negative and their absolute values are larger than that of background pixels and noise pixels in a Gaussian-blurred infrared image. The proposed filter takes a composite function of the curvatures for detection. An approximate model is also built for optimizing the parameters. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is effective and adaptable for infrared small target detection in complex background. Compared with several popular methods, the proposed algorithm demonstrates significant improvement on detection performance in terms of the parameters of signal clutter ratio gain, background suppression factor and ROC.     

A fast-saliency method for real-time infrared small target detection

Infrared small target detection plays an important role in applications including military reconnaissance, early warning and terminal guidance. In this paper, we present a fast method, called fast-saliency, with very low computational complexity, for real-time small target detection in single image frame under various complex backgrounds. Different from traditional algorithms, the proposed method is inspired by a recent research on visual saliency detection indicating that small salient signals could be well detected by a gradient enhancement operation combined with Gaussian smoothing, which is able to delineate regions of small targets in infrared images. Concisely, there are only four simple steps contained in fast-saliency. In order, they are gradient operation, square computation, Gaussian smoothing and automatic thresholding, representing the four procedures as highpass filtering, target enhancement, noise suppression and target segmentation, respectively. Especially, for the most crucial step, gradient operation, we innovatively propose a 5 × 5 facet kernel operator that holds the key for separating the small targets from backgrounds. To verify the effectiveness of our proposed method, a set of real infrared images covering typical backgrounds with sea, sky and ground clutters are tested in experiments. The results demonstrate that it outperforms the state-of-the-art methods not only in detection accuracy, but also in computation efficiency.     

Infrared small target detection via line-based reconstruction and entropy-induced suppression

This paper proposes a novel infrared small target detection method which is composed of two stages. The first stage is implemented by line-based reconstruction for suppressing the background clutter, and the second stage is induced by information entropy for further standing out the targets. Compared with the state-of-the-art approaches, the proposed approach is able to achieve better performance in terms of efficiency and accuracy.     

A robust infrared dim target detection method based on template filtering and saliency extraction

Dim target detection in infrared image with complex background and low signal-clutter ratio (SCR) is a significant and difficult task in the infrared target tracking system. A robust infrared dim target detection method based on template filtering and saliency extraction is proposed in this paper. The weighted gray map is obtained from the infrared image to highlight the target which is brighter than its neighbors and has weak correlation with its background. The target saliency map is then calculated by phase spectrum of Fourier Transform, so that the dim target detection could be converted to salient region extraction. The potential targets are finally extracted by combining the two maps. Moreover, position discrimination between targets in the two maps is used to exclude the false alarms and extract the targets. Experimental results on measured images indicate that our method is feasible, adaptable and robust in different backgrounds. The ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curves obtained from the simulated images demonstrate the proposed method outperforms some existing typical methods in both detection rate and false alarm rate, for target detection with low SCR.     

复杂背景下红外弱小目标检测算法研究

复杂背景下低信噪比弱小目标的检测是红外预警系统中的重点和难点。为解决红外图像中杂波干扰多、目标信噪比低等问题,提出一种非线性空间滤波的目标检测方法。该算法在传统线性空间滤波算法的基础上,通过对预测点周围4个象限的背景灰度值进行计算,并动态地调节阈值,以达到突出小目标的目的。试验结果表明:当背景包含较多复杂因素时,采用非线性空间滤波的检测方法可有效地抑制杂波,实现弱小目标的提取,与线性滤波算法结果相比较,虚警数降低了3/4,且易于工程实现。     

A new infrared small and dim target detection algorithm based on multi-directional composite window

This work presents a new method based on gray characteristic analysis for infrared dim small target detection under complex backgrounds. Firstly, an improved detection window with eight directions and three layers is introduced to investigate the gray distribution characteristic of different structure in an infrared image. Secondly, we adopt a pretreatment process based on morphology filter and mean filter to reduce the running time and propose a detection rule on characteristic analysis for infrared targets. Meanwhile a new parameter optimization algorithm based on fuzzy control theory is employed so that the detection rule could be independent of the initial parameters. Finally, experimental results indicate that the proposed method can effectively detect the dim small targets and has better tracking performance.     

A novel infrared small target detection method based on BEMD and local inverse entropy

Compared to other targets, it is more difficult to detect infrared small targets due to several aspects such as the low signal to noise ratio, low contrast, small size, the lack of shape and texture information of the targets, especially under complex background. In this paper, a novel infrared small target detection method based on peer group filter (PGF), bi-dimensional empirical mode decomposition (BEMD) and local inverse entropy (LIE) is proposed to overcome these difficulties. The PGF is implemented to remove the noise and improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the initial image. Our proposed BEMD algorithm is able to estimate the background effectively and get the target image by removing the background from the original image and segmenting the Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs) making use of the local inverse entropy. Experimental results demonstrate that the novel method can extract the small targets validly and accurately.     

基于FPGA的运动目标实时检测跟踪算法及其实现技术

运动目标检测跟踪有关的算法及其基于PC平台的实现已经比较成熟,但实时性较差。将采集的彩色视频流分成灰度和彩色两个数据流,灰度视频用于目标检测,彩色视频流用于跟踪显示。以经典的帧间差分法和背景差分法为基础,根据现场可编程门阵列(FPGA)的特点及片外同步动态存储器的存取控制要求,对这两个算法用FPGA逻辑单元进行了设计和实现。对原始彩色视频流和转换后的灰度视频流的存取使用乒乓操作,在滤波和形态学处理时使用了并行的流水线操作,极大地提高了算法的实时处理能力。在FPGA开发板上构建了一个彩色视频图像中运动目标检测跟踪系统,对系统性能进行了测试。实验结果表明,系统可在多种分辨率和帧率下进行运动目标进行实时检测跟踪;固定背景差分法对目标运动速度无限制,但当使用帧差法对快速运动目标进行有效的检测时,应使目标的帧差间距大于3.2像素。     

Scale-space point spread function based framework to boost infrared target detection algorithms

Small target detection is one of the major concern in the development of infrared surveillance systems. Detection algorithms based on Gaussian target modeling have attracted most attention from researchers in this field. However, the lack of accurate target modeling limits the performance of this type of infrared small target detection algorithms. In this paper, signal to clutter ratio (SCR) improvement mechanism based on the matched filter is described in detail and effect of Point Spread Function (PSF) on the intensity and spatial distribution of the target pixels is clarified comprehensively. In the following, a new parametric model for small infrared targets is developed based on the PSF of imaging system which can be considered as a matched filter. Based on this model, a new framework to boost model-based infrared target detection algorithms is presented. In order to show the performance of this new framework, the proposed model is adopted in Laplacian scale-space algorithms which is a well-known algorithm in the small infrared target detection field. Simulation results show that the proposed framework has better detection performance in comparison with the Gaussian one and improves the overall performance of IRST system. By analyzing the performance of the proposed algorithm based on this new framework in a quantitative manner, this new framework shows at least 20% improvement in the output SCR values in comparison with Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG) algorithm.     

Dual multi-scale filter with SSS and GW for infrared small target detection

Multi-scale analysis is a powerful tool in the field of signal processing. In this paper, we propose an efficient small target detection algorithm that is mainly based on the dual multi-scale filters which work sequentially. The algorithm consists of two stages: at the first stage, Spectrum Scale-Space (SSS) is used as the pre-process procedure to obtain the multi-scale saliency maps, which can suppress the low frequency background noise and make the target region prominently at different scale levels. As a result, the more detail information and feature information can be exhibited in the different decomposition image level. After then, the least information entropy is used as the criterion to select the optimal salient map out; At the second stage, the Gabor wavelets (GW) algorithm is utilized to suppress the high frequency noise remained in the optimal salient map and match the feature of size and direction of small target at different scales and angles, and next, to ensure the robustness of the target detection, Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) is applied to fuse all the GW multi-scale images into one optimal target image, which is the final output of the presented method. Experimental results show that, compared with the contrast method, the proposed algorithm has high SCRG and high correct target detection rate, and works well in different types of complex backgrounds.     

局部对比度结合区域显著性红外弱小目标检测

为了解决局部对比度方法的计算效率低,以及在某些红外场景中易出现虚警的问题,将其与图像区域显著性相结合,提出一种改进的局部对比度算法区域局部对比度算法,仅在图像的显著性区域中进行局部对比度计算,而非遍历整幅图像。首先进行基于图像信息熵和局部相似性的红外图像区域显著性度量,经二值化得到单帧图像显著性区域;接下来在该区域中进行局部对比度数值计算,得到区域局部对比度图像,最后经过自适应阈值分割,得到弱小目标检测结果。实验结果表明,区域局部对比度算法可以极大提高红外弱小目标的信噪比,检测结果准确,虚警率低,与原始的局部对比度算法相比,检测效率有明显提升,可以更好地保持弱小目标的形状。     

一种基于正负差图像的运动目标检测新方法

运动目标检测领域中现有的差图像法是利用绝对值差图像检测差图像上运动目标区域，用现有方法检测时易受噪声干扰，而且当摄像机有自运动时需要进行背景运动补偿。因此，提出一种新算法，即首先分别计算正差图像与负差图像，然后利用运动目标区域在正差图像与负差图像中的幅值、形状以及运动等信息的对称性对其进行检测，最后给出针对飞机尾焰序列图像进行检测的结果。实验结果表明：该方法可提高运动目标检测的可靠性与效率。     

Effective and robust infrared small target detection with the fusion of polydirectional first order derivative images under facet model

The robust detection of IR small target acts as one of the key techniques in the infrared search and tracking system (IRSTS). This paper presents a new method of small-target detection which formulates the problem as the detection of Gaussian-like spot. Initially, the amendatory first-order directional derivative (AFODD) based on facet model is applied to get the polydirectional derivative IR images, and the direction information of targets is reserved in these images. Then, the AFODD images are fused together to ensure the robustness and effectiveness of target detection. At last, the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method is carried out to make targets in the fusion image more prominent, so that they can be extracted out by a simple threshold segmentation. Experiment results show that the presented method performs well even in the IR images with complex backgrounds.     

基于复滤波器组的红外弱小目标检测算法

为了有效抑制复杂背景的干扰,降低复杂背景所带来的虚警,提高目标检测的信噪比,提出了一种基于复滤波器组的红外弱小目标检测算法。分析了复杂背景下带有弱小目标的红外图像中复杂背景和弱小目标图像各自的频谱特性,并引入了分频段处理的思想。比较了各种滤波器的性能,并选用了基于复小波的滤波器组,用该滤波器组将红外弱小目标图像分解到各个子频域;对分解后的各频段图像分别进行基于罗宾逊滤波的目标检测处理,提取各频段图像中的奇异点;根据目标图像和背景图像的频谱特性的定量分析结果,选取合适的权值,将各频段检测的结果进行加权融合,得到最终的处理效果。实验结果表明:弱小目标检测方法较之于传统的不分频段的高通滤波处理方式可以获得更高的信噪比,目标得到明显的增强,背景杂波得到更有效的抑制,各项探测指标均更优。     

Small target detection based on difference accumulation and Gaussian curvature under complex conditions

Small target detection is a significant subject in infrared search and track and other photoelectric imaging systems. The small target is imaged under complex conditions, which contains clouds, horizon and bright part. In this paper, a novel small target detection method is proposed based on difference accumulation, clustering and Gaussian curvature. Difference accumulation varies from regions. Therefore, after obtaining difference accumulations, clustering is applied to determine whether the pixel belongs to the heterogeneous region, and eliminate heterogeneous region. Then Gaussian curvature is used to separate target from the homogeneous region. Experiments are conducted for verification, along with comparisons to several other methods. The experimental results demonstrate that our method has an advantage of 1–2 orders of magnitude on SCRG and BSF than others. Given that the false alarm rate is 1, the detection probability can be approximately 0.9 by using proposed method.