One efficient facet-based small target detection technique

This paper presents a method for the detection of small objects from the infrared images. The detection is performed on the intensity surface well fitted by the cubic facet model. The small target energy distribution presents as a convex surface on the image intensity surface and the target center is the maximal extremum points of the convex surface. According to the extremum theory, the possible small target position is analytically determined by directly convolving the original image with the derivative operators deduced from the bivariate cubic function. With the available coarse target locations, the potential target is separated from the background by examining the intensity features of the target cluster. Experimental results on the sample infrared images demonstrate the proposed algorithm provides a robust and efficient performance.