False alarm rate reduction in the interpretation of acoustic to seismic landmine data using mathematical morphology and the wavelet transform

This paper presents a new technique for false alarm rate reduction to improve the performance of automatic object detection systems that operate on digital images. The proposed technique is applied to the images obtained by a Laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV) based acoustic to seismic (A/S) system.This technique is based on morphological image processing and the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) of the image data. It begins with a color image transformation to obtain a grayscale image and then a closing operation that enhances the larger objects in the image. After that, the DWT is applied to the closed image. The decimation effect of this DWT helps in the removal of small clutter objects the image. The approximation component resulting from the DWT is used in the detection process. Results from the proposed technique are compared to those obtained using traditional detection techniques. ©Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010.