Automatic target recognition employing signal compression.

Quadratic correlation filters (QCFs) have been used successfully to detect and recognize targets embedded in background clutter. Recently, a QCF called the Rayleigh quotient quadratic correlation filter (RQQCF) was formulated for automatic target recognition (ATR) in IR imagery. Using training images from target and clutter classes, the RQQCF explicitly maximized a class separation metric. What we believe to be a novel approach is presented for ATR that synthesizes the RQQCF using compressed images. The proposed approach considerably reduces the computational complexity and storage requirements while retaining the high recognition accuracy of the original RQQCF technique. The advantages of the proposed scheme are illustrated using sample results obtained from experiments on IR imagery.

Application of integrated sensing and processing decision trees for target detection and localization on digital mirror array imagery.

We demonstrate the applicability of integrated sensing and processing decision trees (ISPDTs) methodology to a set of digital mirror array (DMA) hyperspectral imagery. In particular, we demonstrate that ISPDTs can be used to detect and localize targets by using just a few DMA Hadamard frames, so that an entire hyperspectral data cube need not be collected to successfully perform the given task. This suggests that such an integrated sensing-processing suite may be appropriate for extremely time-sensitive pattern-recognition applications.

Quadratic correlation filter design methodology for target detection and surveillance applications.

A novel method is presented for optimization of quadratic correlation filters (QCFs) for shift-invariant target detection in imagery. The QCFs are quadratic classifiers that operate directly on the image data without feature extraction or segmentation. In this sense, the QCFs retain the main advantages of conventional linear correlation filters while offering significant improvements in other respects. For example, multiple correlators work in parallel to optimize jointly the QCF performance metric and produce a single combined output, which leads to considerable simplification of the postprocessing scheme. In addition, QCFs also yield better performance than their linear counterparts for comparable throughput requirements. The primary application considered is target detection in infrared imagery for surveillance applications. In the current approach, the class-separation metric is formulated as a Rayleigh quotient that is maximized by the QCF solution. It is shown that the proposed method results in considerable improvement in performance compared with a previously reported QCF design approach and many other detection techniques. The results of independent tests and evaluations at the U.S. Army's Night Vision Laboratory are also presented.