Moving target detection by nonlinear adaptive filtering on temporal profiles in infrared image sequences

Target detection is of great importance both in civil and military fields. Here a new moving target detection approach is proposed, which employs a nonlinear adaptive filter to remove large fluctuations on temporal profiles that are produced by evolving clutters. Initially, this paper discusses the temporal behaviors of different pixels in infrared sequences. Then, the new nonlinear adaptive filter that is a variation of the median-modified Wiener filter is given to extract pulse signals on temporal profiles that relate to moving targets. Next, the variance of each temporal profile is estimated by segmenting each temporal profile into several segments to normalize the amplitude of the pulse signals. Finally, the proposed approach is tested via two infrared image sequences and compared with several conventional target detection algorithms. The results show our approach has a high effectiveness in extracting target temporal profiles amidst heavy and slowly evolving clutters. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.