Extracting targets from regions-of-interest in infrared images using a 2-D histogram

We propose an effective method of extracting targets from a region-of-interest (ROI) in infrared images by using a 2-D histogram, con- sidering intensity values and distance values from a center of the ROI. Existing approaches for extracting targets have utilized only intensity val- ues of pixels or an analysis of a 1-D histogram of intensity values. Because the 1-D histogram has mixed bins containing false-negative bins from the target region as well as false-positive bins from the background region, it is difficult to extract target regions effectively due to the mixed bins. In order to solve the problem of the mixed bins, we propose a novel 2-D histogram- based approach for extracting targets. Experimental results have shown that the proposed method achieves better performance of extracting tar- gets than existing methods under various environments, such as target regions with irregular intensities, dim targets, and cluttered backgrounds. C 2011 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). (DOI: 10.1117/1.3536471) Subject terms: target extraction; thresholding; 2-D histograms; principal component analysis.