Developing and evaluating a target-background similarity metric for camouflage detection

PLoS One. 2014 Feb 3;9(2):e87310. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0087310. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Background: Measurement of camouflage performance is of fundamental importance for military stealth applications. The goal of camouflage assessment algorithms is to automatically assess the effect of camouflage in agreement with human detection responses. In a previous study, we found that the Universal Image Quality Index (UIQI) correlated well with the psychophysical measures, and it could be a potentially camouflage assessment tool.

Methodology: In this study, we want to quantify the camouflage similarity index and psychophysical results. We compare several image quality indexes for computational evaluation of camouflage effectiveness, and present the results of an extensive human visual experiment conducted to evaluate the performance of several camouflage assessment algorithms and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of these algorithms.

Significance: The experimental data demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach, and the correlation coefficient result of the UIQI was higher than those of other methods. This approach was highly correlated with the human target-searching results. It also showed that this method is an objective and effective camouflage performance evaluation method because it considers the human visual system and image structure, which makes it consistent with the subjective evaluation results.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Clothing
  • Environment
  • Eye Movement Measurements / instrumentation
  • Eye Movement Measurements / statistics & numerical data*
  • Eye Movements / physiology*
  • Humans
  • Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted
  • Male
  • Neuropsychological Tests / statistics & numerical data
  • Pattern Recognition, Visual / physiology*
  • Photic Stimulation
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, where the authors work and study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.