Dual domain auxiliary particle filter with integrated target signature update

For the first time, we formulate an auxiliary particle filter jointly in the pixel domain and modulation domain for tracking infrared targets. This dual domain approach provides an information rich image representation comprising the pixel domain frames acquired directly from an imaging infrared sensor as well as 18 amplitude modulation functions obtained through a multicomponent AM-FM image analysis. The new dual domain auxiliary particle filter successfully tracks all of the difficult targets in the well-known AMCOM closure sequences in terms of both centroid location and target magnification. In addition, we incorporate the template update procedure into the particle filter formulation to extend previously studied dual domain track consistency checking mechanism far beyond the normalized cross correlation (NCC) trackers of the past by explicitly quantifying the differences in target signature evolution between the modulation and pixel domains. Experimental results indicate that the dual domain auxiliary particle filter with integrated target signature update provides a significant performance advantage relative to several recent competing algorithms.