Target detection from coregistered visual-thermal-range images

A method to automatically detect targets from sets of pixel-registered visual, thermal, and range images is outlined. It uses operations specifically designed to work on the different kinds of images to exploit the information given by each of them. Five features are used to distinguish the targets from the clutter: texture, brightness, temperature, surface planarity, and height. The results from individual detectors are then combined to improve the detection rate while reducing the number of false alarms. A morphological operation called “erosion of strength n” is also introduced and utilized as a powerful tool for removal of spurious information. The excellent results obtained for detection support the suitability of this approach for other ATR (automatic target recognition) problems