Infrared dim target detection based on character filter

More and more infrared imaging systems were applied in military and civil fields and the performance of detecting dim target is one important index for infrared imaging system. The performance of the method based on background suppression is declined with many false alarms and even loss target in image with clutter background. In order to improve the performance of dim target detection, the method base on target enhance is developed. In this paper, after analyzing the grey value distribution of target, background and noise in local area, the pixel's shape parameter was defined, maximum strategy was used to obtain one size of pixel's shape parameter, and enumerate strategy was used to search the possible target size. And then, one character filter based on shape parameter was designed to enhanced target and suppress clutter background. Compared with the method based on background suppression, experimental results show that proposal method is effective to enhance target and suppress clutter background.