Research on Key Technologies of Super-Resolution Reconstruction of Medium and Long Wave Maritime Infrared Image

Abstract

Complex illumination, solar flares and heavy smog on the sea surface have caused difficulties to accurately obtain high-quality imaging and multi-dimensional information of marine monitoring targets, such as oil spill, red tide and underwater vehicle wake. The principle of existing imaging mechanism is complex, and thus it is not practical to capture high-resolution infrared images efficiently. To combat this challenge by utilizing new infrared optical materials and single point diamond-turning technology, we designed and processed a simple, light and strong condensing ability medium and long wavelength infrared imaging optical system with large relative aperture, which can obtain high-quality infrared images. On top of this, with the training from a combination of infrared and visible light images, we also proposed a super-resolution network model, which is composed of a feature extraction layer, an information extraction block and a reconstruction block. The initial features of the input images are recognized in feature extraction layer. Next, to supply missing feature information and recover more details on infrared image extracted from a dense connection block, a feature mapping attention mechanism is introduced. Its main function is to transfer the important feature information of the visible light images in the information extraction block. Finally, the global feature information is integrated in the reconstruction block to reconstruct the high-resolution infrared image. We experimented our algorithm on both of the public Kaist datasets and self-collected datasets, and then compared it with several relevant algorithms. The results showed that our algorithm can significantly improve the reconstruction performance and reveal more detail information, and enhance the visual effect. Therefore, it brings excellent potential in dealing with the problem of low resolution of optical infrared imaging in complex marine environment.