Morphological operator for infrared dim small target enhancement using dilation and erosion through structuring element construction

To effectively enhance infrared dim small target, a new morphological operator is proposed by constructing two structuring elements based on the properties of target regions and their surrounding background. By utilizing the two constructed structuring elements, the proposed morphological operator uses dilation and erosion to enhance the target regions and suppresses the surrounding background, which directly achieves infrared small target enhancement. Also, the proposed method is simplified by using flat structuring elements. Experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively enhance infrared dim small target embedded in clutter background.