Spatio-temporal filter based small infrared target detection in highly cluttered sea background

This paper presents a separate spatio-temporal filter based small infrared target detection method to address the sea-based infrared search and track (IRST) problem in dense sun-glint environment. It is critical to detect small infrared targets such as sea-skimming missiles or asymmetric small ships for national defense. On the sea surface, sun-glint clutters degrade the detection performance. Furthermore, if we have to detect true targets using only three images with a low frame rate camera, then the problem is more difficult. We propose a novel three plot correlation filter and statistics-based clutter reduction method to achieve robust small target detection rate in dense sun-glint environment. We validate the robust detection performance of the proposed method via real infrared test sequences including synthetic targets.