Detection of surface mines using hyperspectral sensors

Hyperspectral imaging is an important technology for the detection of surface and buried land mines from an airborne platform. For this reason, hyperspectral was included in the two experiments that were executed by the Army RDECOM Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD) in Fall 2002 and in Spring 2003. The purpose of these experiments was to bring together a wide variety of airborne sensors for the detection of mines, with well ground-truthed targets. The hyperspectral sensors included the Airborne Hyperspectral Imager (AHI), a University of Hawaii LWIR HSI sensor and the Compact Airborne Spectral Sensor (COMPASS), an NVESD VNIR/SWIR sensor. These experiments were carried out at sites where an extensive array of buried and surface mines were deployed. At the first experiment called Forest Fusion I, the mines were deployed against several different backgrounds ranging from bare dirt to long grass. For the second experiment, called Desert Fusion, the mines were placed on backgrounds ranging from loose sand to mixed sand and vegetation. The COMPASS and AHI sensors were both placed on the Twin Otter aircraft, and data was collected with the airplane at a variety of altitudes. In this paper, the data collected on surface mines are reviewed, and specific examples from each background type presented. Spectral detection algorithms are applied to the data and the results of the algorithm processing are presented