Background suppression for cloud clutter using temporal difference projection

• Removing evolving background clutter for weak target is a great challenge task for a long time.
• A temporal projection method based on temporal difference is proposed.
• We establish the proposed on the basis of obtaining optimal detection performance and practical application.
• The algorithm proposed yields a higher performance on clutter removing and enhancing target than early method.

To remove high intensity cloud clutter in infrared image sequence containing point target with high velocity, based on the optimal log-likelihood ratio detector test (LLRDT) together with exploratory temporal data analysis, a method called standardized maximum projection of temporal difference on adjacent frames (SMPTDAF) is proposed. First, cloud scenario is classified and analysis according to temporal features. Second, mathematical difference models of adjacent frames for all regions are presented. Third, to obtain the optimal temporal performance under LLRDT operator, based on the models, projection method after differencing and its simplified method for practical application are established. Finally in the paper, we compared the proposed method against classical temporal suppression method named Moving Target Indicator (MTI) and wavelet method by test image sequence. Experimental results show that the average SCR gain exceeds 11 when the target SCR is from 1.0 and 3, which is better than results of some representative multi-frame filters mentioned above.