Detection of Small Target Using Schatten 1/2 Quasi-Norm Regularization with Reweighted Sparse Enhancement in Complex Infrared Scenes

In uniform infrared scenes with single sparse high-contrast small targets, most existing small target detection algorithms perform well. However, when encountering multiple and/or structurally sparse targets in complex backgrounds, these methods potentially lead to high missing and false alarm rate. In this paper, a novel and robust infrared single-frame small target detection is proposed via an effective integration of Schatten 1/2 quasi-norm regularization and reweighted sparse enhancement (RS1/2NIPI). Initially, to achieve a tighter approximation to the original low-rank regularized assumption, a nonconvex low-rank regularizer termed as Schatten 1/2 quasi-norm (S1/2N) is utilized to replace the traditional convex-relaxed nuclear norm. Then, a reweighted l1 norm with adaptive penalty serving as sparse enhancement strategy is employed in our model for suppressing non-target residuals. Finally, the small target detection task is reformulated as a problem of nonconvex low-rank matrix recovery with sparse reweighting. The resulted model falls into the workable scope of inexact augment Lagrangian algorithm, in which the S1/2N minimization subproblem can be efficiently solved by the designed softening half -thresholding operator. Extensive experimental results on several real infrared scene datasets validate the superiority of the proposed method over the state-of-the-arts with respect to background interference suppression and target extraction.