Three-dimensional double directional filter for tracking and detecting moving dim weak target

Abstract

The aim of the present work is to assess the performance of three-dimensional Double Directional Filtering (TDDDF) algorithm for detecting and tracking a weak moving dim target against a complex cluttered background in infrared image sequences. This paper proposes an novel TDDDF to improve the integrated signal-to-clutter ratio (ISCR) and enhance the three-dimensional directional filter's (TDDF) target energy accumulation ability further. Since the TDDDF do well to whitening noise (or quasi whitening noise) but not so sensitive to complex cloudscene background, prior to the filtering, a newly pre-whitening method termed Spatial-Temporal Adaptive Filtering algorithm is used here to suppress clutter background. Extensive experiment results demonstrate the proposed algorithm's ability in detecting weak dim point target against cloud-cluttered background. Finally, performance comparisons of the proposed algorithm and TDDF, on real IR image data, are presented in which the advantages of the proposed TDDDF filters are shown.