Target recognition method based on template matching in downward-looking infrared image

Automatic ground target recognition technology in downward-looking infrared imagery is challenging problems due to the complexity of real-world. A robust ground target recognition method is proposed for downward-looking infrared (DLIR) image sequences in this paper. A complete model of the proposed method is designed firstly and the principles of some key technologies are introduced as following. Perspective transformation is used to solve the projective problems of landmark translation, rotation and scale variance in real-time image sequence. The size of landmark is estimated real-timely by using flight parameters and imaging parameters for getting the model with an appropriate scale. Based on the matching results of landmark and flight parameters, target position technology is proposed to identify the position of target by using the position relation between landmark and target. Experimental results using real-world image data with complicated background showed that the proposed method not only causes high precisely locating results, but also has good robustness for target occlusion.