Print Email Facebook Twitter Semi-hidden target recognition in gated viewer images fused with traditional thermal IR images Title Semi-hidden target recognition in gated viewer images fused with traditional thermal IR images Author Smeelen, M.A. Contributor Loog, M. (mentor) Schwering, P.B.W. (mentor) Faculty Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Department Intelligent Systems Programme Media & Knowledge Engineering Date 2012-06-11 Abstract Nowadays, for the defense and security community, it is of prior importance to classify threats that are merged in a background while at the same time understanding the context of the entire scene. Traditional TV and Infra-Red (IR) cameras allow for an easy context understanding by providing valuable background and scenery information. Unfortunately, they typically do not allow a human observer to detect and classify semi-hidden targets. This study investigates the added value of the combined use of laser range gated viewer (GV) and IR camera to solve semi-hidden target recognition. To this end, an algorithm is developed to fuse GV and IR images based on a weighted averaging technique and employing existing multi-resolution image representation schemes. Our best fusion method for semi-hidden target recognition is selected from all methods considered by using an Image Quality Metric (IQM) combined with an accurate saliency metric. Both metrics are validated using human conspicuity experiments. For very complex scenarios, we additionally designed a background dimming algorithm that dims the scene either entirely or partially based on the context of the scene (contextual) or locally around the threat, while keeping the threat itself undimmed. The optimal combination of fusion method and amount of dimming is determined by means of a second human conspicuity experiment. In a final human experiment, we tested if moving objects influence the preferred amount of dimming. Our work shows that fusing GV into IR scenery images improves the human recognition task on semi-hidden targets. Moreover it demonstrates that a relatively simple pixel-based approach with a PCA-based weighted fusion scheme is the optimal fusion method among those considered. Additional results show that, especially, so-called contextual dimming improves target recognition in very complex scenarios and that moving objects require slightly more dimming in order to obtain the required performance. Subject image fusionhuman recognitioninfra-redLaser Range Gated ViewersaliencyImage Quality Metricsconspicuity experiments To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:7c309b8f-ca9e-464e-987e-5a65babafda0 Part of collection Student theses Document type master thesis Rights (c) 2012 Smeelen, M.A. Files PDF Thesis_Menno_Smeelen_June2012.pdf 6.21 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:7c309b8f-ca9e-464e-987e-5a65babafda0/datastream/OBJ/view