Wire Detection by GPR Using the Hough Transform

This paper investigates the use of the Hough Transform (HT) for the detection of surface wires that are attached to explosives. Wires, when laid, have a linear structure in which HT can be a promising technique to extract the features and detect the wires. We use a step-frequency ground penetrating radar with a co-pole configuration mounted on an air-borne platform to collect the data for the research study. After beamforming for constructing the data image, projecting onto the surface plane, and obtaining the edges, HT is applied to extract features for wire detection. The features include orientation, strength and relative strength that correspond to the orientation angle, the length, and the confidence of a wire. Experimental results using the data collected from an indoor facility containing several kinds of wires show the effectiveness of HT for wire detection.