Algorithm of space point target detection for IR scan images

According to the imaging characters of space infrared scan sensor, such as time-delay integration and half-pixel mis-alignment, a point target detection algorithm for IR scan images was proposed based on the adaptive background prediction. Firstly, the background prediction was modeled by the recursive background estimation, and the filter coefficients were computed by the steepest descent optimization procedure. Secondly, the adaptive threshold was determined on the residual image after the background elimination. Then, the target pulse matching was performed on the thresholded image in cross-scan and in-scan direction respectively to suppress noise and extract target. Finally, the algorithm detection performance was simulated using Monte Carlo method. The experimental results show that the detection probability reaches 99.5%(probability of false alarm 1.07 × 10^-2) as the input SNR is no less than 3. The real-time analysis of the algorithm shows that the capability of data processing is 31.37 Mb/s.