Moving weak point target detection and estimation with three-dimensional double directional filter in IR cluttered background

Abstract

We assess the performance of a novel three-dimensional double directional filtering 3DDDF algorithm for detecting and tracking weak moving dim targets against a complex cluttered background in infrared IR image sequences. This proposed method increases the tar- get energy accumulation ability further than the three-dimensional direc- tional filter 3DDF method. Prior to the filtering, a new prewhitening method termed a three-dimensional spatialtemporal adaptive prediction filter TDSTAPF is used to suppress the cluttered background. Exten- sive experiment results demonstrate the proposed algorithms' ability to detect weak dim point targets against a complex cloud-cluttered back- ground in real IR image sequence and the performance comparisons of the proposed method and 3DDF. © 2005 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation