Compression of infrared imagery sequences containing a slow-moving point target

Appl Opt. 2010 Jul 1;49(19):3798-813. doi: 10.1364/AO.49.003798.

Abstract

Infrared imagery sequences are used for detecting moving targets in the presence of evolving cloud clutter or background noise. This research concentrates on slow-moving point targets that are less than one pixel in size, such as aircraft at long ranges from a sensor. The infrared (IR) imagery sequences that are captured by ground sensors contain an enormous amount of data. Since transmitting this data to a base unit or storing it consumes considerable time and resources, a compression method that maintains the point target detection capabilities is desired. For this purpose, we developed two temporal compression methods that preserve the temporal profile properties of the point target. We evaluated the proposed compression methods using a signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR)-based measure for point target detection and showed that the compression may improve the SNR results compared to the IR sequence prior to compression.