<title>Optimal location of an object with unknown Gaussian random luminance on an unknown Gaussian random background</title>

Abstract

We provide a first approach to the problem of the detection of an object with random gray levels appearing on a random background. The optimal algorithm in the case where the gray levels of both the object and the background are white Gaussian noises is derived using a maximum likelihood technique. It is shown that this algorithm consists of correlations of the silhouette of the reference object with preprocessed versions of the scene image. This enables simple digital or optical implementation.