Analysis of the infrared images to detect power lines

An image sensor system consisting of an infrared (IR) camera and a color video camera is presented to detect and identify flight obstacles especially power lines. Images including obstacles are gathered by the sensor system. The IR images demonstrated the advantage over color images in detecting power lines in many environments. Several imaging filters are applied to the IR images to enhance the target-to-background contrast and to suppress the noise in the images. Fusion of IR and color images is also tried to generate a virtually enhanced image. These image processing techniques proved to be valid to facilitate the algorithm development for detecting and identifying flight obstacles.